Alphen aan den Rijn Wednesday April 6 2011 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
nice shot by Thomas Briesch during the Swedish WGC.
Day 5 from the Turino mixed comps brought Giorgio Galetto on spot 2 for the day and on spot 10 overall after, you remember ZERO points on day 1. Luca Di Marcha won the competition and I know him as a good pilot !!!! Only 6 pilots managed to finish after 229 km. on this last day . Must have been a very difficult day as the best speed was 66.8 km./h.
The weekend was just awesome. Warm and sunny and not only good for sun-bakers but also for pilots in a lot of parts in Europe. With 619 flights on the OLC on Saturday [Australia and the USA participated in the good weather!] and 520 on Sunday a lot of pilots enjoyed their soaring.
The 1.089 km from Jim Payne from Rosamont Skypark in the ASW 27 with a speed of 129 km/h was good, but even better the flight with the Kestrel 17 m. from Warner Springs also in wave ; 610 km with a speed of 143 km./h.
The mountain-area Germany/Austria/Italy is still good with lot’s of nice flights.
That gorgeous weather continued here. In Alphen we had about 4/8 of big nice high cu’s on Monday, till about 4.30 PM when some” milky layer” drove in , BUT with still nice cu’s under it. [see picture] I guess that pilots who had their day off or just did not have to be at work on the beginning of this week, were happy. From Terlet flights from over 300 km. were flown. Quite some Dutch pilots “moved ” to Saint Auban to enjoy the mountains over there.
at 4.50 pm
The hole in the roof of the 737 -300, from the USA company Southwest Airlines, forced the pilot to quickly dive –controlled –from 11.000 m to 3.350 m. and forced the company to ground the other planes to check them on metal fatigue cancelling 600 flights. The pilots got , as I read in the paper , after their emergency landing, a minutes -long-applause from the shocked passengers.Good on them !!!! By the way ,they found more weak spots in 2 or 3 other planes , so they are out of order till they are repaired. This morning I heard that the American Aviation Authority FAA, has ordered to check all the Boeing 737-300 on metal fatigue. About 175 have to go through the test. They reckon it will take about 5 days.
Talking about this incident , the accident from 2009 revives in our minds now we heard that pieces of the French Airbus have been found in the ocean. Everybody still hopes that the black boxes will be found to finally know what went wrong with this flight killing 228 passengers and crew.
By the way the shooting in Alphen was not really meant for Alphen. 2 Bulgarian and 2 Dutch guy’s from the southern part of Holland must have tried to get rid of somebody who followed them and got stuck in a quiet area from Alphen. It seems a wild west race from criminals following criminals. But it cost the lives of a 23 year old Dutch and a 39 year old Bulgarian guy.
And the accident with the two 15 year old scouts is really a drama as they were neighbours as well.One of them studied at the high school I was on in the past, the school only has another name now.
Next interesting competition is in Priviedza; the Flight Challenge Cup Gliding 2011 starts on April 8.Lot’s of participants. Will keep you updated.
Really like the pictures from Thomas as well, so here are a few more. CU next Sunday Cheers Ritz
