Alphen aan den Rijn September 21 2009
The family weekend was great! It is good to touch base with the whole family once a year! I do realize on such moments as well, how sad the 3 families are from the 3 Dutch young pilots who died in Portugal , while training to be a pilot. I read that one of the boys was Dutch/Australian and…that maybe the piper Seneca had exploded!! They found wreckage over 4 km., but it is better to wait for the investigation.
Holland belonged this weekend to the area with the highest temperatures. We played farmers-golf on a huge field with 26 dgr., but for soaring it was a bit difficult as the visibility was pretty poor.Looking at the OLC I could not find any flight in Belgium or Holland because of this bad visibility , but clouds were definitely there.
The USA enjoys still great weather with a 705 km flight in an ASW 24 from Warner Springs, up and down over the mountain -chain!
The next weekend on Sunday the Dutch top pilots come together to look back and celebrate the good results from the 2009 season. Specially Rene and Tim the new European champion in Club class and the runner up Tim , will be cheered on. It will be good see everybody, as the Rayskala juniors will be there as well . I will have an interview with Rene and Tim both participating in the JWGC and the EGC.
It seems Airbus has no problems with the recession. They expect to sell over the next 20 years about 25.000 planes! They base their statement on the fact that low cost companies are growing and that there will be more “huge towns”, so more companies to bring people from A to B. They claim that passenger-transport will grow with 4.7 % and freight/cargo with 5.2 %. Hope for them that this is correct.
The Corowa containers are packed and ready to “send” to Australia. In Rotterdam the Priviedza container is already waiting after a trip by train from the Slovak Republic, so all of them , 5 in total, can go on the same ship to Melbourne. A huge job, but Francesco and his team are very experienced. I heard Grietje has not been well, so I specially wish her an extra lot of “power”, as the new season over there in good old OZ, will be pretty heavy again. On October 15 I will be in Tocumwal for 4 weeks and hope to see with my own eyes, that the over-seas season starts with good soaring weather.
That’s it for now, off to Amsterdam , see you on Wednesday!
cheers Ritz