Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday June 12 2011 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
Love the great finish over the heather at Terlet, pictures courtesy to Bert Kuijper.
The meteo was correct about Europe this week, the great weather was supposed to be in Finland and on Friday they had temperatures up to 30 dgr. and even Lapland had in the low 20thies, something not happening often.
Räyskälä, had a few 500 km. flights, with blue , but later cumulus-conditions.On Friday even over 600 km. flights, one ot the pilots flying it; Martti Sucksdorff ,one of my friends.
Another friend Hans, is having fun at Beas De Segura in Spain with flights between 500 and 850 km.
Also in Holland conditions were good with as best flight 564km. from the S of Holland.
In the USA, the standard class National Championship is in full swing. Crisp County-Cordale is the place to be. To be honest , I never heard of that place, so I had to google to find out that,….it’s capital is Cordale , the WATERMELON capital of the world, with a huge festival in July, ….it is in Georgia and they owned and operated the first electricity power plant in the USA. Nothing about an invasion of glider pilots, but you can atleast see their results on the OLC.
One of the pilots flying these Nationals is from Belgium; Baudouin Litt.
My USA friends know more about it so , on www.soaringcafe.com they keep you informed about this 2011 National Championship. But you can also read more about that great flight from Minden , I told you about earlier; the record USA wave flight [ in the Northern hemisphere] in a Kestrel….2257 km. on May 31, in 13 hours and 20 minutes and an average speed of 103 miles/h.!!!
Problems at Zaventem Airport [Brussel in Belgium] ;Aviapartner who takes care of the luggage of 40 companies flying into and from Zaventem had a 24 hour strike on Thursday, delaying lot’s of flights and a lot had to be be cancelled as well. Reason; Aviapartner lost the license to continue their job to Swissport and 1200 people might loose their job.
42 Pilots fly at Malden [Holland] during the Open Military comps. They are certainly NOT all serving , but it is a great competition on a very nice airfield , where they are building a brand new hangar. The old hangar has been demolished; still have great memories on it as I went solo at that airfield.
Pilots return to Malden every year, because of the atmosphere. They fly with the club in the weekends and they also are host to people who want to fly from Monday till Friday.
Great to see that 10 pilots fly in the 2 seater class[ 2 DG1000 and the rest duo discus!] In 18 m. one of the importers from the JS 1, Maarten Baltussen is flying and in 15 m. class the number 3 from the Nationals Bas Seijffert is doing a good job. He was in the past F16 pilot [till 1996] and now flies for KLM .
After one cancelled day and 2 days with pretty marchinal weather, they finally had on Thursday pretty long tasks; Club-321 km., [3 from 9 pilots finished, ] 15 m. -351 km.,[ 2 from 8 finished] 18m.-AAT in 3.30 hours [ 3 from 15 did NOT finish ; best distance 364 km!]and the 2 seaters had the same as 18m.with a distance between 221 and 461 km.[ 7 from 10 made it home ; best distance 317 km.] That was also the last flying day! The last one was cancelled.
Winners, all good mates, are in club class Frank Hiemstra one of the 3 behind that great new tracking system ADS-B, which was to be seen again during this competition.
In 15 m. class the importer from HPH in Holland , but this time flying a Mosquito Ton Staasen ,from my former soaring club ZES, was the winner. He was ONLY 5 points ahead of Bas in the ASW 28.
In 18 m class it was the JS1 with Maarten winning [ as said importer for JS1] and in the 2 seater class Ronald Kaay from Eindhoven won in the duo-discus . Congratulations to all of them!!!! A pity the weather did not co-operate too much, but 3 out of 5 days is not TOO bad!!!!
Bas 
2-seater-fun
The Sun storm from last Tuesday which COULD have given some problems for pilots , as well as for the several satellites, did not do any harm. It seems to have been a spectacular eruption. Phone -and- GPS systems ,it all worked without problems and it will do no harm anymore either according to the Max Planck Institute who does sun-research .
Our Danish friends have their Nationals as well in Arnborg with 56 competitors in 4 classes!! They started with 4 days, then 3 non flying days due to the weather and they also had better weather on Thursday. Some well known pilots flying, as good old Stig Öye, Henrik Breidahl, Arne Boye- Möller , Rasmus Örskov and Jan Andersen !Also Ib who flew with us in Tocumwal and flew a lot of new Danish records then, flies here in 15 m class. Unfortunately he was the only “out-lander ” on day 2, won by Stig Öye, but his revanche came on day 3 with a day- win!!!
Also Ole Arndt flew with us in Tocumwal,[ he and Ib fly now in Corowa] and he flies an ASW 20 in club class now.And….he won day 5!!! Good on both of them!
On Friday they had speedtasks in the 2-seater [515 km.] and standard class [ 515 km] and an AAT in the other 2 classes; 5 hours and between 294 and 625 km. It looks they expected a good day. Never saw the results however, but maybe they still appear on soaringspot.com.
The second flight of the “solar plane” is a fact as well. At least …if the the Swiss made Solar Impulse could fly yesterday from Brussel to Paris to attend as honored guest, a flight-show.The wings of this very first by sun powered plane, are full of sun collectors and it is a combination of the span of a normal commercial plane and the weight of a car. VERY interesting!!!!! I saw a little video and it is really “pioneering”.
In the end they had problems , the Solar Impulse did fly but had to return above the North of France back to Brussel, where it landed safely, after some technical problems and a very tough headwind.
Yesterday the official training has started for the WWGC at Arboga.The first briefing was at 10.00. I will follow it with some inside news , you can see the rest on www.wwgc2011.se. Enjoy!
I finish with some “different ” pictures from the NK 2011; courtesy Hans Spekkers and Bert Kuijper.
. Enjoy your long weekend. Cheers Ritz
