Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday May 10
A lot of pilots flying international competitions will be flying at Terlet during the Dutch Nationals from May 21 to 30. With at this stage 24 entrees in 18 m. class, 11 in club, 18 in the combi-class and 11 in open, there will be some “firework” to reach the first places.
Under them, young JWGC participants, former JWGC participants and several pilots flying WGC and EGC or having flown them, so in ALL ways a “HOT” competition!
Competition director is the very experienced Max Bloch, who is doing this already for a few years now and does a great job. He has a new team around him , but still some who worked with him already for a longer time.
The NLS, [www.nls.nl] close to Schiphol Airport, will be the head sponsor. They are the flying school where young enthusiast boys and girls get a professionnel education to be a pilot. Their slogan; NLS, the right way to the left seat!
In the past the KLS , [ school from the KLM] sponsored young people too, by donating money for their gliding training, in the hope to “win” them later for their school to have real motivated pilots.
I try to be there for a few days , so you will be up to date. Great to catch up with so many I have n’t seen for a while. Former WGC pilot Bert Kuyper will be the tug master and one of the “tuggies” is many times Dutch champion and former WGC pilot Daan Pare.
Do you remember the DREAM job in Australia??A young Brit, Ben Southall, won the the wages of 83,500 Euro for 6 months and….living in a dream house , having his own pool and golf car, on a dream island [Hamilton] to promote it.
The Dutch girl from Amsterdam , still in the race with Ben till a few days ago, as one of the last 15 who were invited to visit the island, was very fair and said that Ben was, when she would not win , her favourite candidate. He won from more then 34.000 people out of 200 different countries, reacting on the add.
The other winner is the Queensland bureau for tourism. They spend 750.000 Euro on the campaign and claim they got for 50 million free publicity.
Fatraglide 2009 ,an international competition in Slovakia is on its last day and had 6 days out of 9. Jan Louda [ standard cirrus] is at the moment still number 1 in club class and with nearly 500 points ahead on fellow -country -mate Jan Kantor, it should be easy for him to win. In the combi class both Lubor and Pavel from Slovakia are doing a great job, with Lubor still on number 1 and also with a big marge. Nice to see some of the the Danish pilots on 3-4- and 5 at this stage.
Some sad news too; Yesterday a 65 year old experienced pilot [ father of 4 ] died after his glider crashed on the highway from Namen to Luik in Belgium. No cars were involved in the accident and the first reaction on the Belgium news was that, maybe the pilot has tried to land on the road. On the TV in Holland however a Belgium witness said that the glider went down in a “vrille”, a few minutes after it was launched. It is under investigation , so it is better to wait what caused the accident. Sad it is, very sad!
No more news , so CU on Wednesday. Dieter “Dundee” will be my guest this week, so I am eager to hear all his stories from Australia , where he lives for half a year ………in Tocumwal. This was blog number 195 so 5 to go for the 200!
Cheers Ritz