Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday May 2 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
What a fantastic performance from UK pilot Gerard Dale!!!! He started early on that last day and won the FCC 2010 CUP. Congratulations!!!! I was sure Sebastian would keep his act together on the last day but one way or another he did not and he was 14th and ended as runner up. Not bad either! Good on Roman who was pushing all the way from the beginning on, to win that cup as well.
Hope the WGC will be as good as this “cup-fight”, I really got into it!!!
The organisation made their statistics and you know I am a fan of statistics , so here they are as far as you have not seen them;
Cub class flew 126.368 km in 1850 hours.
Mixed class flew 153.956 km in 2100 hours.
Congratulations to Roman , even more for Gerard and also for Sebastian, as he is and remains a “TOPPER “.
After 9 days of mostly good soaring, Gerard won with nealy 600 points ahead of the runner up. That is super, even very super!!
Less then 20 points in club class, between runner up Jan Louda and the very good flying Boris Zorz who ended up 3d. and even won a few days. Great competition and they are absolutely ready for the big one ; the WGC 2010!
Something different and …a pity as Japan Airlines ,because of their economy measures, is going to give up their daily flight to and from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport after 44 years. I spend quite some time, walking and shopping, in the neighbourhood of the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam and enjoyed seeing the different crews over there. Some pilots I knew visited , called me and we enjoyed dinner together . Schiphol hopes that another company will keep the “line” Tokyo – Amsterdam vv open. So do I , but I will miss all those friendly Japanse people.
Good luck and all the best to my Japanese friends!!!!
In the well known soaring place Alice Springs , where Hans Werner Grosse in the glory-years flew world record after world record, a hot air balloon from NASA crashed. The balloon was supposed to go up to 40 km height to do research for radiation in the atmosphere. One of the cables broke and moved the “basket “as big as a house and full of very expensive instruments against a fench and a car and crashed. Weather circumstances were good as they said, but fall wind and gusts always make it difficult to rise a big hot air balloon. They are going to try again somewhere in May. Hope they can replace such expensive instruments that soon!!!!
By the way, you know Hans Werner flies “his “Eta now, and I heard he has 1500 hours in it already. Not bad as he is not the youngest anymore!!!
After 3 weeks of mainly dry weather with very sunny even hot conditions, [28 dgr. C. last Thursday] we are back to normal Dutch conditions with rain and 15 dgr. Even hail and thunderstorms were fore casted for this weekend. But yesterday afternoon was rather nice!!
That stops for a few days the nice early soaring here in Holland. Hope and it looks like, we are going to have better weather again for next week the beginning of the CAE NLS Dutch Nationals.
The middle part of Europe still enjoys great weather , mainly , wave or ridge conditions, but thermals as well. Some great flights in Germany yesterday. And in the afternoon, between showers my Belgian friends Bert jr. and Bert made interesting flights in a discus 2 A [402 km] from Keiheuvel and the Libelle [ 413 km] from Diest. The nice weather here started just too late.
In Switzerland the 2010 regionals are flown in Birrfeld. Nice to see that Jürg Haas who flew a few months in Tocumwal on the ASW 27 from Chris Hostettler, [a ” permanent ” pilot at Sportaviation ], is on spot 3 after 2 days of flying, with only 6 points on the runner up and 21 on number 1.
42 Competitors fly in 4 classes , but I have not noticed too many big names in these regionals.
In Florida our hang glider friends are having their competition ; the 2010 Fly Tech Race. Good to see Jonny Durand from Australia at this stage after 5 days of flying on spot ONE!!! He is still flying the Moyes Light Speed.
Davis Straub , the well known editor of the famous hang-glider -online -magazine, OZ REPORT, is on spot 32 from 43 participants, from 6 different parts of the world, as Italy, the UK , Russia , Brasil and Colombia and Australia. All the rest is from the USA.
Great to see my friends in Canada enjoy some good soaring , so early in their season as well. A Duo Discus made a nice flight from the wellknown airfield of Invermere in the Canadian Rocky Mountains ;580 km with 109 km/h.
A Dutch journalist [33] must have been pretty sick in the mind. He committed suicide! Yes…and ??? He needed help from an innocent pilot. It seems he hired a Piper Cherokee , killed the pilot with a knive which was found in the plane, took the key out , the engine stopped and they crashed. How bizar !!!A letter to his family and the blood on the knive, seems to proof the suicide. This all happened in Argentinia.[ Bariloche]. Poor pilot! The journalist himself had a licence to fly but was refused to hire a plane, so he chartered one ………with a pilot.
Sometimes I wonder in what world we live.
Have a good week,
cheers Ritz