Swiss Nationals in mixed open and mixed 15 m. class.

Who is going to win the cups!?

Last Sunday was the last day from the Swiss nationals and with marginal point-differences in the 15 m. class , it could be a very interesting day.
Tasks were set; 15 m. got a 170.51 km. on their plate and open had to go for 217,28 km.
In open where Markus [Gauman]  has a lead of nearly 500 points the tension was less big than in 15 m. where there were possibilities for 3 pilots each sharing daily wins; Rene[Schneebelie], Stefan [Leutenegger] and Juerg [Haas].
Specially the “fight”  between Rene and Juerg with a bit more than 100 points between them , kept my attention.

Ready to go, as shared by the organizers on their site http://www.sgzuerich.ch/

Start lines opened at 13.13 for open and 13.36 for the 15 m. class and the weather was sunny and good.Stefan , Rene  and  Juerg started about the same time;13.32.
A new daily winner,Simon Gantner, but it was all about who was going to be the CHAMPION. It was Rene, with 4193 points, followed by Juerg 4036 and Stefan with 3914. So nothing really changed in the final scores! Here they are , the Swiss heroes as shared on their site.

The open class , turned out in the end to be more exciting. Gabriel in the ASH 31 MI, /21 m. won the day. Markus was “only” on spot 7 loosing more than 200 points, but NO WORRIES, he had such a good lead , that those points were peanuts.4606 was his final score  and the runner up, Marcel Duenner [ASG 29/18m]  had 4202 points. Gabriel was on spot 3.
Markus, a gentleman pilot , who has flown many WGC’s was in the overall lead EVERY day.
Congratulations to all and with the news-tickers and pictures a nice competition to follow. THANKS!!!

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HUSBOS; UK-15 m. and standard class nationals 2015.

On the last day, Sunday, the weather did not co-operate at Husbands Bothworth , so the Nationals had already finished one day before . A total of 5 soarable days.
The message from Mike was ;
“The clearance behind the fronts is not good enough to offset the 25kts+ wind. Prize-giving will be at 13:00″.

They had a good day , the best of the comps on Saturday, with even the first 1000 points in the standard class for Andy Holmes; 393.07 km. with a speed of 117 km./h. which was 6 km. faster than the number 2.
A lot of LS 8 gliders in this class.
Out of 5 days Ayala [Truelove] was the best. She did not win a day but flew consistent over all days. She gained a total of 3388 points and is with that she is the new UK standard class CHAMPION.Congratulations Ayala !
With 3354, Richard [Hood] was the runner up.Howard Jones was 4th [3304], Jez Hood 5th [3252]and Matt Davis 7th.[3213]

In 15 m. class the 1000 points on Saturday were for Ed Johnston. [ASG 29] ; 391.8 km. with a speed of 123.3 km./h. AND,..with that he was also the new 15 m. UK CHAMPION.[3675]
Runner up with 2 daily wins but loosing over 100 points on the last day, was Phil Jones with 3666.
Former world champion Leigh Wells finished on spot 5.[
They had an” an enjoyable and safe competition.”

Adam [Woolley] shared on FB this impressive picture from a UK finish. As far as I can see on the call signs the picture is not from this competition, but a very nice picture to close this item.

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The German Standard and 15 m. class NATIONALS 2015.

When I found out they were flying , they had one week behind them with 2 flyable days . They started on the 26 th with a scrubbed day , then had 2 flying-days , another 2 scrubbed days and continued again last Sunday. Here we look back on the days.

Standard class;
May 27 day 1, with 169.1 km. and all 39 pilots in this class finished. Winner and runner up both “a”  JAN, one Omsels , one Umlauf , who I know from his long flights with us in Australia.Nice guy!Both fly a Discus [2a and 2br] and both flew about the same speed 100 km.h.
May 28, day 2, with 462.3 km. another good day for Jan Omsels; he was 3d with 864 points. Not so good for the other Jan, he was on spot 34 loosing quite some points.
Robert Schroeder had a good day as runner up and tops after 2 days the overall scores. The Levine boys are trying to get in the right groove, so is Sebastian Naegel.
May 31 day 3, with a B task from 300 km. to fly.In this class quite some pilots finished 31 in total. Robert had another good day , 9th, with 918 points.The Levine brothers were at 5 and 10 and Jan [Omsels] on spot 4.

June 1, day 4, the meteorologic summer has started not yet in Ulm- Erbach, as a racing task from 169 km. was set, later changed in a 2 hour AAT. They managed to get 72 pilots in the air in 1.25.
22 From 39 finished the task.A good day again for Jan [Umlauf] as he was 4th,  not so good for Jan [Omsels] who was at 19.Felipe at spot 6 did well , Enrique was ” au vache” but flew 260 km. The winner today, Simon Briel,  flew 268 km. with a speed of 128.19 km./h.
After 4 days Robert is at spot 1 with 2802 points , then Jan [Omsels] 2979, at 3 is Felipe with 2763 and at spot 4 Simon with 2754.

June 2, day 5, with 346 km. SO close all those top 4 pilots so today with a long task, new chances and possibilities.
232.6 was however the new task number C.
8 Times a Discus in the top today.
2 Pilots flew over 100 km and “got” over 600 points. A good day for Jan [Omsels] and Felipe. The overall changed; 1. is now Jan,[3382]  2. Felipe [3339] 3. Simon[ 3315] and Robert dropped with a day spot 26 from 1 to 4[3268]

15 m. class;
May 27, day 1, with 210.5  km. In this class 32 pilots finished , one unfortunately was out, after 139 km.Lot’s of nice girls in this class but day was not for them; winner Henrik Bieler in the Ventus 2b .
May 28, day 2, with a big task 512.2 km. A 1000- points -day for the winner Michael Eisele, the winner from day 1 Henrik had 925 points. Freddy Hein had 2 good days and after 2 days he leads the pact with 1497 points and the next 6 pilots are within less than 100 points.
May 31, day 3, with 416.8 km. and for most that was TOO much. Not however for Kai Lindenberg in the ASW 27, as he won the day with a speed of  83 km./h.Tilo [Holighaus ] had till now not really great days, but today he was runner up in his VENTUS 2ax. Stefanie Muehl, just one of the winners from the Hahnweide comps, was the only girl finishing and also the last finisher with a speed of 69.64 km./h. But she made it.
Some were just out; on 401 km.
Only 12  from 33 came finished !

June 1 , day 4, started with a 2 hour AAT. Also here, 22 from 33 finished, so a tough day.Thomas Wetteman was the winner with a speed of 124.07  km./h.over 270.8 km. Michael had the same amount of points 619. Tilo finished on spot 9. 22 From 33 came home.
After 4 days 2 pilots have the same amount of points and share the first spot; Michael and Thomas….3026.

June 2, day 5, with REAL tasks; a racing task from 403.5 km. Unfortunately they had to change to task B; 327.9 km. and only 5 did not finish. One of them Kai Lindenberg [ after 265 km.] who was at an overall spot 3 , when the day started.On the end of the day he was at spot 10 overall.
Extra hard ,….as it was a 1000 points-day in this class; Those points were for Ulrich Schwenk and runner up was Michael with 979. Thomas was on spot 5 with 965 points.
After 5 days the overall scores look as follows; 1. Michael 4005, 2. Thomas 3991, 3. Ulrich 3926

No tasks set yet but the weather looks good. More on Sunday.
Mind you the last days scores are not yet official.

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The Italian UNICA class championships 2015.

With 46 compititors in ONE class [unica] the comps started in Ferrara [ where a new hangar was opened in 2014] on May 30 with a lot of friends and well known names and a good looking ,  very kind but above all very experienced and talented meteo- man, Guido Guidi, a lieutenant colonel but also an Italian meteo man at TV!
I met him at several comps in the past.

In Rieti 2008, had to really search for ”  him” in my archive.

Good looking or not, for the first day he could not give the pilots very good weather.But,…264.6 km. is not bad to start with and this day was won by Giorgio [Galetto] and 34 from 46 finished with him!!! 8 pilots flew over 100 km./h.
Riccardo [Brigliadori] was the runner up.
May 31, day 2,  had less weather and an AAT from 2 hours was set. This time Riccardo won and Giorgio finished at spot 8.
Great to see young Davide [Schiavotto] is doing so well 6 yesterday and runner up today. Also good to see 3 members of the Vergnani family flying , where I know Elena and Nicola , but not Michelle.
June 1, day 3 ,was for Giorgio again. He flew with a speed of 109,14 km./h. over 295,35 km. Thermals with 2 m./s. average as Clara mentioned. Giorgio [Ventus 2cx /18 m.] , Davide [ASG 29 e]  ,Peter [Hartmann ASG 29 e] ] and Alberto[Sironi ARCUS T] ] followed.
June 2, day 4, a better day again with cu’s and a cloud base of 1500 m. so 301 km. was set. A new name for the daily prize; Antonio Soffici in the Nimbus 4 T, followed by Peter and Giorgio.
After 4 days the overall scores look like this; 1. Riccardo 2893, 2. Peter 2875, 3. Giorgio 2874 so ONE point less.
On 4. Bern Hubka from Germany in the JS 1 with 2832 and Davide on 5. with 2806.

The next days will be exciting to follow.They continue till the 7th.

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The Open Military Championships at Malden in Holland.

The 50thiest version of the OMK. Congratulations!
They started on Monday and continue till Friday, last day. 42 Pilots in 3 classes , club, combi and open.
Summer starts with not -too- soaring weather, for that reason pretty good tasks to begin with and ….they promise that midweek the temperatures will go up from 17 to 27. BUT,…as we all know nice weather does n’t mean per definition great soaring weather.
The skies looked great as you can see, but  quite a few pilots had to out-land.Here is the story.

A total of  outlandings on day 1.
As shared by the organizers.

Club;
Monday June 1; 184.64 km. The first to finish was Ben [Hiemstra] instructor at the Friese Aero Club and ” an engine ” for EVERYTHING, p.e. as webmaster from Zweefportaal .He flew the distance in nearly 3 hours, and had good clouds, lot’s of shadow, but also rain en route.He thought it was a tough day. He was NOT the daily winner.[3]
Another topper had that honor,   tracking -systems-genius ,  Jip in the LS 4; speed 96 km./h. He started last at 3 PM , when the weather improved , the first started at 13.15.

Runner up, was one of the juniors who travels to Narromine in November Nick Hanenburg in the St Cirrus AG , also travelling down under.
Nick keeps a blog in Dutch to share his comps with all of us , on his way to Narromine;
http://www.dutchjuniors.zweefvliegen.net/
There is still some money needed for our Dutch young ones. They are saving hard , are supported by their parents and friends and if we Dutch friends want to see our mates become junior world champion a donation can be made at ;
rekening nr NL17 FVLB 0226197212   van C.N.Koster, Hellouw onder vermelding van:  WK junioren
They will be for ever grateful.

Back to club class.From 13 in this class 5 finished.
Poor Alexander he was 3 km. out!
Tuesday was cancelled for all classes!!! Wind up to bft. 8 and showers etc. All gliders stayed in the trailer or hanger. No worries that 2 storey hangar is HUGE.

Everything fits, even the” brand-new-tug” !!!
As shared by the organizers.

Combi;
Monday June 1; 218.27 km. Johan Lemmens in the Ventus 1, frequent flyer at all comps at Keiheuvel in Belgium , was runner up  this day with 74 km./h.[833 points] .
Adriaan Oudhuis in an ASW 20 won the 844 points for the day.
11 from 19 finished!

This picture was taken by one of ” my”  HusBos JWGC  pilots Rens, who flies in Team M 1 in   the DUO DISCUS in the combi class
Beautiful Malden from above! with the huge double storey hangar , the camping to the right and the bar, not unimportant to the left.

Open;
Monday June 1 ;247.38 km. Frequent WGC pilot, Jeroen Verkuijl won in his JS 1 with 101 km./h. 4 others from 10 finished as well.

  

HJ ,[ the Janus c RG, ] finish.

No task set yet for today.

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SOLAR IMPULSE.

Somebody wrote under this by Kiki shared picture;
” bon voyage, incredible courage, can only support that.

It’s a big step so many kilometers over the ocean, only 20 minutes naps and gone for days and all by ONE man Andre Borschberg.; 8000 km. from China to Hawaii with the great Ocean in between. Unfortunately the weather was too bad , so an in-between -landing in Japan at Nagoya had to be put in. When the weather improves the flight will be continued.
As Betrand Piccard said from the control-center in Monaco; ” We are no daredevils, we are explorers!!!
And WHAT explorers!!!!!
This flight from China to Hawaii is the 7th leg, still 4 to go to final destination Abu Dhabi , were they started in March.They hope to arrive in August,  to make this dream come true.

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And to finish 2 great pictures from the recent  French Nationals.

As shared by the AAVE. [Association Aeronautique du Val d’Essonne]
Till 2016!!!

Cheers Ritz