Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday November 7 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
Yesterday “we” had the NZD, the Dutch Soaring Day. Between 300 and 400 guests in all different ages visited. I was very pleased to see so many young ones!!! At 7.40 in the morning I was picked up by Maarten who , as I found out , lives close to me. He organised that I could drive with 6 very kind glider pilots from the Zuid Hollandse Aeroclub [former airbase Valkenburg- www.zhvc.nl] to the south of Holland. After a pleasant drive , with 7 in one car, [some kind of space -wagon from Peugeot with indeed 7 roomy seats!] we arrived at the airbase of , where F16’s are still very active, as in Leeuwarden the Northern part of Holland.
In the car also friend and former Sportavia guest Kees, who travels to Australia this year again [Corowa]. So memories started straight away.
A huge white tent showed the static show of brand-new gliders, engines , instruments and what we/ gliderpilots need more to be happy.
Lectures about how we keep our young pilots not for 1 year , not for 5 but for “EVER”, also about meteo, stress -management [ relationship between stress and performance] and aerobatic flying. I particular liked the lecture about good airmenship, from F16 pilot and instructor and former demo-pilot; Ralph “sheik” Aarts . He is such an enthusiastic young man he “gets” you while talking to you. On top of that, this was in a special shelter with a small entrance -door from about 50 cm thick, the only shelter where pictures were allowed to be made!Mysterious ? It is and stays an active military base and it was great from Colonel van der Mast , the commandant of the airbase Volkel, to allow us to visit a small and secured part of it!!!
People interested in history looked in the museum at the history of planes and the airbase Volkel. One room had a glider-simulator, one showed video’s selected for the contest [Kees and his mate won the first prize with a video about flying at one of the the wave mecca’s in Italy, Aosta and the link for this winning video will be here next Wednesday]
The Dutch webmaster, Ben Hiemstra involved with the Dutch part of the OLC and the site Zweefportaal, received the gold medal from the KNVvL , for the valuable work he is doing for all of us.
More, …. as I met Uli [Schwenk] again after many ,many years. Nice talking to him. He is in textile as most of you know but now also in “pyama’s”, I mean those for gliders , he took over JAXIDA and that is high quality; hail or UV will not get through !!! He even showed me men’s underwear [sloggi] in which it is easier to relieve the bladder while flying long distance.
The fly is horizontal and just under the elastic band. [www.uli-schwenk.de ]
Great part of course is to meet so many friends, for me friends from 1967 onwards!!!! Kisses, hug’s , memories , ONE BIG party of recognition.
One of “my” juniors , Jelmer, works for DG now and DG Flugzeugbau showed a brand-new DG 2-seater,which looked ‘huge” but gracious and fabulous [ not the DG 101 M Jelmer flew during Euroglide an, even newer/later one! www.dg-flugzeugbau.de ] and the businesses for selling glider-equipment had lots of visitors.
A great thank you for the organizers even taking care of a good lunch and a very tasty dinner.
Just received fresh from the press the next news from Australia and I quickly add it, after I wrote about Uli.
Schempp-Hirth announce change of representative in Australia
Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau wish to announce that, after a fifteen year association with Chris Kiehn, that they will be changing their representative in Australia. Chris provided a very sound technical background to his role, spending some five years working as a direct employee of Schempp-Hirth in Kirchhiem unter Teck. He continued that relationship for a further ten years, after emigrating from Germany, working as their agent in Australia. Schempp-Hirth would like to offer their thanks to Chris, for his long service to the company, and wish him well with his increasing family & work commitments.Schempp-Hirth’s new representative in Australia will be Bryan Hayhow of High Speed Flight. Bryan comes from a hang gliding background, having run his own manufacturing operation that exported to some fifteen countries, before he began gliding ten years ago. He has a long association with those Schempp-Hirth competition pilots who also began flying in hang gliders, Tomas Suchanek, Peter Harvey, Patrick Driessen and also Ross Gaddes of Sailplane Services Ltd, who is Schempp-Hirth’s New Zealand representative. He will bring a great deal of sports aviation marketing experience to his role and is looking forward to getting to know Schempp-Hirth’s customer base in Australia. All new aircraft sales enquiries and spare parts orders should now be directed to:High Speed Flight Bryan Hayhow Mob: 0414 672 709PO Box 293 Thirroul NSW 2515
gliders@highspeedflight.com.au www.highspeedflight.com.au
It is a very busy time at Schempp-Hirth right now, particularly with strong ordering for the 20m two seat Arcus, both the pure glider, the motorised self launcher and a great deal of interest in the recently test flown electric self launching version. The yet to be finalised, Quintus 23m Open Class concept, is also generating significant interest and the option book for this glider is growing steadily. We are looking forward to shipping the first Arcus to Australia shortly and feel that the Quintus, with it’s very high wing loading capability, will be very well suited to the Australian racing conditions.
Jaxida Covers appoint High Speed Flight their Australian Agent
Having recently purchased the long established all weather cover business and transferring its operations to Germany, Uli and Daniela Schwenk have been looking to increase their international representation. They are pleased to announce the Australian Schempp-Hirth agent, High Speed Flight, will also be representing their covers to the gliding fraternity. With an established family textile marketing business and Uli being an internationally recognised competition pilot, who was also the Jaxida German agent for many years, Daniela and Uli bring a great deal of experience to the all weather cover business. They can custom build covers for almost any glider and are now marketing them into the general aviation industry as well. These are covers of the highest quality, that both protect your glider from UV & rain, while also allowing a good airflow around the aircraft.All enquiries for custom made covers should now be directed to High Speed Flight (see contact details on this page).
the new email & website are not up yet but will be soon…
With 14.5 dgr. in the night of Thursday to Friday, we had the warmest ever night in November. On Friday I saw people on the train station without a coat!!!! A bit unfortunate for 8 train passengers was that the train I normally go with to Leiden/Amsterdam , had a collision. 3 People had to go to hospital, 5 had minor, most neck injuries. I was stuck for nearly an hour, as due to police investigation no train traffic was possible for 2 hours on the station, but luckily I was NOT in that train.
By the way , today the temperature dropped to 6 dgr. it is grey and wet.
A bit of a scaring experience for the 433 passengers and 26 crew from the Quantas Airbus 380, when , as it looks, an engine exploded and forced the pilots to fly back to Singapore, where they just had departed 6 minutes earlier, heading to Sydney. The emergency landing , after dumping the fuel first, went without problems , the fire brigade rushed out but passengers could normally leave the plane, most probably with a bit of a higher blood pressure. Parts of the engine were found on a island and police has asked the farmers to bring each piece they found to the police, to have the best investigation of what happened .
The original departure was from London and on the Indonesian and Australian news was for a moment the message that the plane had crashed. Luckily this was wrong information!!!It did have an engine failure and it is possible to fly with 3 engines , but the captain wisely decided to turn around to check the engines. Till further notice and after deep investigation, all Quantas A 380’s , 4 in total and only 3 years old, will stay on the ground. A huge decision! Safety first!!!!
And …the next day Quantas got into trouble again as a Boeing 747 had an engine failure and also that full plane had to return to Singapore where it just departed.
From Australia I received the next link, so I share it with you.Here is the ABC link http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/04/3057244.htm
and this is The Australian link;
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/disc-failure-almost-brought-superjumbo-down/story-e6frg6nf-1225948586541
Julio Poch’s future looks brighter again as NO proof was found in his diaries or log- books of him flying the deadly flights accused him from. It seems he only flew fighters!!! The fact that some colleagues spoke bad about his behaviour in the junta-time and the fact that he flew for the navy, is not a proof , certainly not , now they found out he did not fly transport-or passenger planes for the navy.Next week some Dutch pilots will be involved in a video conference to declare , this time, more unburdening facts. Flying a 600 FAI triangle in a Hornet??? Yes they did it in Western Australia [from Beverley] were temperatures are in the 30thies as I heard and great cross country flying is a result. Flying a Ventus that day [last Wednesday] resulted in 754 km.[ an out and return more or less] .
Very pleased to see that Kenshi flew a 168 km flight from Itakura in Japan in a DG 400 and great that Itakura is busy enough!!! Nice club!!!
Mikoluvice [CZ] pilots still find great wave up to over 6000 m.
After , as I heard from friends living in NZ , a very cold winter and a pretty wet spring , pilots in Omara could make great flights with good thermal conditions. A Discus flew 463 km.
Australian kilometer-eater Terry Bellair started his season , from his home-field Raywood, with a 475 km flight in his DG 400/17m. and in Gariep Dam the first flights have been flown now as well. Also Bitterwasser and Kiripotib are active. Great cloud-skies for Benalla, Corowa and Benalla, where the first guests are enjoying nice flights too.The Boeing 787 , DREAMLINER, arrived for a short visit at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, from Paris , urging hundreds of “spotters” with video camera’s and camera’s to the fence around the field on Friday evening. The dream liner visits some capitals to test how this huge plane fits and what could be changed. Also potential customers and other guests were allowed to see the plane. Some of my Japanese friends , flying for All Nippon Airways will look forward to the first flight with this plane as they ordered the first Dreamliner which can fly about 16.000 km without a stop!!!! Yesterday the plane left again. The one but last race in Formula 1. “Poor “Jens Button, current World champion, was stopped by armed criminals in his armoured car with driver in Brasil after he left the circuit !!! Luckily they escaped by leaving as quick as possible the traffic jam they were waiting in !!!
Hope it does n’t have any influence on his driving today, as he can still be world champion this year. A lot depends on today!!!CU on Wednesday!! Ritz