Alphen aan den Rijn Wednesday January 25 2012
ritzdeluy@hotmail.com www.glidinginternational.com www.soaringcafe.com
And this is the promised picture send by Natasja!
If you click on it, you see us “bigger”, that is ,…when you would like that.
Very interesting to see the kind of yo-yo flight with 2 long legs from 345 and 324 km., from Australian junior pilot Matthew Scutter; 1000 km. in an LS 4 from Gawler. Great effort!!! Here is his comment when you would have missed it;
—-“Declared a 750k, abandoned an hour later after jumping across the hills to find the air dead, dumped my water and eventually scraped away from circuit height. Tried to make the most of the day after that, explored the trough line and the seabreeze? convergence. At one stage I was doing 130kts through the rain at 11,000ft trying not to get sucked into the cloud.
Not sure why everyone went home at 5pm, the day was still thumping and the thermals continued to last light.
Gawler is an underrated XC site – not bad for a dry LS4, someone want to lend me a ballasted EB29?—“
Also interesting, a flight from Benalla 934 km [ 856 triangle!] in an ASH 26 by Polish pilot Chris Becek .Pretty late in the season the perfect weather in Australia, continues .
From one of my friends at Corowa I heard on Monday morning that a few HOT days were about to come. So more flying again for the pilots over there and for Stephan from Tocumwal, a nice 500 km triangle [total of 582km.] was added to the many kilometers he has ” eaten ” already.
Stephan preparing his LS 4.
Picture courtesy Cheryl Madden from Sportaviation in Tocumwal.
Both Corowa [ 2 gliders packed ] and Stonefield [the fuselage from the Discus 2 was in the container on Monday] have started with packing some gliders in the containers. Those who are so lucky to stay till the end to help with the final packing ,will be very pleased to even enjoy more of that fantastic weather from this season.I lived in Tocumwal for 10 years, was there as guest another 10 years but I can’t remember many of these great January-months, with continuing super soaring conditions. Of course December and January should be weather-wise the best months with sometimes excellent days in November and February.
We had an average temperature for January sometimes from 33 dgr. Lot’s of days over 40!!! For sure this did not happen last year. This is the real Australian summer again.
Perth is hot! Look at the minimum temperatures for the rest of this week, as I got them from Vanessa.
Thursday Very hot. Partly cloudy. Min 26 Max 40
Friday Very hot. Partly cloudy. Min 25 Max 39
Saturday Very hot. Sunny. Min 26 Max 42
Sunday Very hot. Sunny. Min 24 Max 40
Monday Very hot. Sunny. Min 23 Max 39
On the contrary Narromine suffers still from pretty wet and bad weather. Hope this changes quickly as the multi-class-comps start this upcoming weekend.
Anne who lives in Narromine mentioned last weekend on FB ;”Narromine Gliding Club caught out in the huge storm yesterday … its pie cart parked on 040 landed up against the orchard farm fence adjacent to the a/d! Could have caused problems if it had ended up on a runway! But all is well, good old KennyMac (not so old) will fix it!–“
Stonefield still had a nice 857 km. flight in the Nimbus 4DM and in a St. Libelle, 577 km [ 405 FAI triangle] , circumstances showed great cu’s but also lot’s of showers, as I read. And yesterday they were so lucky that the trough stayed in the S. part of Australia and…another 1000 km flight was added in the Nimbus 4DM, this time flown by Thomas Seiler.
The better weather in South Africa was last days over Worcester ,where some top pilots as , the brothers Goudriaan and Sven Olivier flew just over and under 500 km. distances, but as Sven said in his comment; ” the storm washed anything out,” but “having fun over the ridges and a beautiful finish ” made up for it again.
They fly the Western Cape Regionals from January 22-29. Together with Mark Holiday they form the handicapped open class with 2 ASW 27 gliders , 1 JS1 and one ASH 25. During the week more pilots arrived as Jenifer Bradley with the Duo discus. A nice and friendly competition and this is the first formal edition.
Also Gariep Dam had some good flights just over and under 500 km. One of our Dutch pilots mentions that “they explore other gliding possibilities at Upington van Ryn Airport”. Will find out more about it, but as my interest was straight away raised I had a look already. With help of a friend I found out that Upington looks like a fabulous airfield. With a runway of 16.000 ft., 4900 m. and 60 m. wide, one of the longest in the world , it was or is a huge airport . The height of the field is 2800 ft. Should have possiblilities enough.
The runway was built to accomodate a Boeing 747 full of passengers cargo and fuel for a nonstop flight to Europe. The airport was opened as Pierre van Ryneveld Airport in 1968.
Will find out more as this sounds VERY interesting!!!!But…hopefully it is or will be not too busy with airliners. I read that in 2007 they had 19.961 departing passengers. As said I am going to investigate. You can also look at www.gariepgliding.co.za but I cant get it to open, neither with com. nor with sa. Will try later have to go now.
Off to Zwolle , so cu next Sunday.
Cheers Ritz
One happy 2011- Dutch- Nationals- family!