Alphen aan den Rijn                            Sunday april 13 2008

Time flies! When you are [very] busy, it seems to still go faster! In the gallery everything is under controle and the opening last weekend was a success like all other openings. With a feeling of satisfaction you try to lay back then, but….that’s impossible as the next jobs are waiting.

Not a lot happening in Luesse and Rieti.
For sure they are working “damm” hard ,but for now we can’t see it.
So we have to wait to see which competitors will be defenitely in , for both world comps.

29 More gliders are back in Europe after their owners /guestpilots had a great time in Australia [Corowa] . No scratch on a glider , no incident or accident in the season; what do you want more!?

For all my Australian readers;
If you are interested in vintage gliders and you happen to live close to Tocumwal, then you should go and look on the 29th of April to the first start, after the restoration from the CONDOR 4.

I got the next press release.
The condor 4 restoration project was started in Japan and later transported to Mike Burns business Aviation & General Engineering in Tocumwal for completion of the project.
The restoration is now almost completed and arrangements have been made for the official first flight after the restoration.
Among the visiting group of Japanese will be a representative of the late owners family.The flight is planned to take place at around 2 pm on April 29.

8 Japanese friends are visiting from Yokohama. All of them worked on the initial restoration of the airframe in Japan.
These Japanese friends are first visiting the Vintage Glider Regatta at Lockhart on the 25th-26-and 27th of April.
A number of the vintage planes will be coming through Tocumwal and most probably do some flying on the 29th.
Ken Uyeama, long- time -visitor of Sportavia in the past and still a good friend, will fly his T21 2 seat vintage glider. I love that “machine”.
The jet Caproni will do a few demonstration flights for any interested parties.
The day will finish with a BBQ and even the president of the Vintage Gliders Australia and some more executives will visit from Melbourne.

The weather is improving here in Europe and I was impressed with the nice flight from Alfred Paul from Terlet[Dutch National Gliding Center]; 578 km in an LS 8. I was enjoying the morning sun that day and KNEW that good flights were possible.
In the Nimbus 4DM Marc even flew one day earlier [april 9] a 655 km flight with 108 km.p/h.
Spring and soaring have finally started in Holland.

Best pilot in Germany “only” flew 526 km last week and in Belgium it still has to start too, so Holland did not bad!!! I know that we have really good pilots here; they even fly when nobody else would fly. Great practise to stay UP!!!!

That’s it for now, hope you have a good week and see you next sunday.

Cheers Ritz