Alphen aan den Rijn March 9 2011 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
Start today with some pictures from Räyskälä , where in 2014 the WGC will be held for unflapped gliders , as decided in last weeks IGC meeting in Lausanne. Just to get you in the mood already. Sorry never was in Leszno [ WGC flapped gliders in 2014] , so I have no pictures from the airfield over there. But when you send them I publish them!!! Thanks!
These pictures are from the JWGC in 2009 ; you can see the lake on arrival, a private seaplane , a little super market in town, [ we bought hamburgers there with the Dutch team during the 1988 EGC] , me busy writing with Mari, the “boss” of the airfield [ in the middle] over looking the situation and Marina , [ to the left] the Italian steward, keeping a good eye on things.
The Dutch season started in style last Sunday, with nice over 300 km flights over very flat land with enthusiastic pilots all calling it a great beginning of the season. ” that’s very morish”!!, was what most said.
Conditions pretty good with cu’s, but also blue skies, sunny but cold!
Also Germany[ at several airfields] , Spain and France had good early spring conditions.
World wide , another wave 1000 km flight from Rosamond Skypark that Sunday, by top pilot Jim Payne in the ASH 25; 1.176 with a speed of 165 km /h !!!!!
With 178 to OLC reported flights on this Sunday it is getting more and more busy again.
Yesterday still over 500 km flights in the Eadst of Australia and …well known pilots as Oscar Goudriaan and Uys Jonker flew in their JS1 nearly 500 km. flights in South Africa. So they are still active as well.
Oscar during the WGC in Eskilstuna.
The 13 th FAI World Para Ski Championships were hold in Austria in Gosau. Aleksey Burenin from Russia whon the mens competion. The best woman was Irena Avbelj from Slovenia, while the Austrians must have been happy with the win of their junior, Michael Grossegger. Best team was the Slovenian Elan team.
Some of the young German pilots have settled down in Vinon to practise in the mountains and to brush up the team spirit after the winter. They even have an ARCUS with them. Patrick Puskeiler was one of the pilots flying this “great machine” . Patrick is also one of the German participants in Musbach at this years JWGC. The German Junior Team will be flying with 7 pilots in their own country !!!
The biggest airfield with a full capacity will be opened in 2012 in Dubai, for passenger flights. Last year a few freight planes landed already at Al Maktoum. In the future 160 million passengers should go” through” this field and 12 million tons of freight. The present airfield will remain open.
Compliments and congratulations to Reiner Rose and his team from the OLC, winning the prestigious Lilienthal medal every year presented on the IGC meeting by the FAI. VERY happy the OLC exists, so we all know and learn, a bit more from each other’s flying.
From Australia I received the message that Quantas pilots are about to strike and that is the first time since 1966. There is a huge dispute between the pilots and Quantas and today negociations continue to avoid cancelled flights for the passengers. According to the ABC;
—The Qantas pilots say it’s fear of losing their jobs that is motivating them today. Qantas set up a company called Jetconnect which employs New Zealand cabin crew and pilots and now operates many of the flights between Sydney and New Zealand. The unions are challenging that arrangement in Fair Work Australia.
Qantas management says Jetconnect has operated more almost 10 years without redundancies. They say this argument is all about pay and accuse the pilots of seeking a pay rise of 26 per cent over three years.—
Hopefully this all works out well. In 1988 Ansett pilots striked and this was one of the worst and most dramatic disputes in history.
To finish the blog some nice pictures from Rieti as I noticed they have started flying as well. The airfield of Rieti and Cantalice, a lovely historic town close to Rieti and visible from the airfield.
