Alphen aan den Rijn     Sunday August 29 2010      ritzdeluy@hotmail.com

Did I say “a lot of rain” last week?????  I can tell you even more rain last Thursday when 50 mm  fell in the morning, the same amount as normally falls in the WHOLE month of August. That is not normal even not for Holland , a real once in 100- years-phenomena, with at some places 140 and even 160 mm in 24 hours!!!! Amsterdam and The Hague got into trouble and lot’s of people had to “broom” the water out of their houses. I don’t even mention cellars…they were just UNDER water. 
Car’s are not used here to drive through water up to their windows, so they needed help and the traffic jam was enormous ; over 300 km . But….the last 2 days were a bit better again.
Yesterday one of the Germans at Vinon, managed to fly in Mistral,  a ” just-over-1000 km-flight ” in a discus 2 T and good old Gilles flew 993 km, also in Vinon.

The 18 m. Nationals in the UK at Lasham  suffer from the same bad weather .They started on August 21 and will finish today. In the same period the Regionals have been flown. Last Tuesday the pilots were able to fly a very short task. The Regionals flew an 86.6 km task!!! and nobody made it home!! Good friend Hugh won the day in the duo discus “making ” 57.3 km.
The 18 m. specialists  had a distance of 150 km. and former World champion Andy Davis in the JS 1 , proved how good he still is   finishing as the only one of 44 competing pilots!!!!
Great to see as well that Mike was 2d and interesting to see that former World champion in open class Pete flies in the Antares finishing that day on spot 6. All pilots started AFTER 4 PM and Andy flew with a speed of 62 km/h . THAT was really struggling and going for it. Former World champion young Leigh Wells was 5th.
Quite a lot of well known pilots in the Regionals as well; Kim Tipple,Steve Jones, David Mac Carthy[ good on you David!!!] and Peter Sheard.
Today they still try to “make it a day”, waiting for the weather and postponing, postponing. They flew in 18 m. 3 days till now and at this time Mike Young is number 1 overall. Andy Davis is the runner up. I was very pleased to see Patrick on spot 8.
Kim and Steve will be 1 and 2 if nothing happens today in the Regionals.

While some of the ” senior ” pilots, fly in Lasham , the UK  juniors  try to get up in the sky in Bicester  in the same period of time. No need to say that their weather was pretty miserable as well. They , the 44 female and male pilots , flew on day 2 ,then 4 days were cancelled! That one day Andy Cockerell won 1000 points flying his LS4 over 207 km with a speed of 86 km/h. GREAT JOB!!!!
On Friday morning it was still raining but as I heard here from the meteo, it should improve to the W of Europe and later in the day here as well.
Today was scrubbed, so no Day 4, but still a winner in the mixed class after 3 days; Tom Smith, who also won the 3d day by finishing as the one and only pilot ,….receiving a TOTAL of 60 points!!!!!!, while he was 3d on day 2.

In Germany the women were still busy with their Nationals till yesterday. Atleast they do fly…a bit. Last Wednesday they flew in 15 m class 226 km and after 4 soarable days Meike Muller is 1 overall in LS 8, with more as 200 points ahead on number 2. Standard class had 226 km. as well and after 4 soaring-days there is REAL something going on in that class as both ” toppers” Kathrin  Wötzel and Swaantje Geyer , both flying LS 1 f are 1 and 2 with 3 points DIFFERENCE!!!!!!
Club class had 196 km to fly and Susanne Schödel is on spot 1 leaving other good pilots as Anja Kohlrausch and Katrin Senne behind her. Katrin lost nearly 200 points on day 3. At that time the 3 girls each won a day ,Katrin even 2 days.
Thursday was cancelled but even with the rain and strong wind 7 pilots would have been ready to straight away  fly a free distance to the East; just going with the wind.
Friday the weather was bad in the morning and did not look too promising for the rest of the day. They did not fly anymore so the winners are; Meike Müller,  Katrin Wötzel with 3 points on Swaantje and Susanne Schödel

And then this ;
—-A British Airways pilot on the flight from London  to Hongkong, pushed the wrong button  while flying over the Nord Sea . The passengers heard that the plane was about to make an emergency-landing on the sea . Just a wrong automatic message on the intercom. Some got the scare of their life,  but the crew aboard listened as well , found out straight away that this was wrong and  was very quick with their apologies. Hope they served a glass of bubbles!
—- Boeing has announced a delay in the first delivery of their DREAMLINER [ Boeing 787] to the Japanese company All Nippon Airways to 2011 instead of the end of this year.It was more or less expected as several “things”had a delay through the years.
—- For the first time in the Dutch history a WOMAN is the squadron leader of a squadron [334] of 7 planes. Susanne has since Friday the command in Eindhoven. Planes as 2 KDC 10’s,[transport and refuelling] 2 Fokker 50 transport planes a Gulfstream and in case of…also 2 Dorniers to help the coastguard will be under her command. Flights up and down to Afghanistan and for the Red Cross belong to her tasks. Susanne is a Lieutenant-colonel.

That’s it …see you next Wednesday most probably later in the day,
cheers Ritz