Part 19 on December 19;
It’s HOT with big capital letters.Even too hot , maybe also too stable this early, to fly as the doors of the several hangars are still closed at 11 AM!!!
Some fires already , I heard on the radio this morning ,with lot’s of smoke, but still far away from here.
You can’t do a lot with these temperatures , but we have had them before here in Tocumwal. It’s not unusual for here.
For Melbourne it’s another piece of cake, they suffer ,….as over 40 is NOT normal, over there.
At 1.30 PM, 2 tugs [Cessna 150 from the SRGC and the Skyfox from Sportaviation] gliders in tow, went up, whilst the clouds to the East look pretty high, pretty good, but also pretty far.Wind is from the NNW. Temperature is 39 at the moment going up every hour with 1 dgr. so we might be up for 43 already today.
The doors and roof of the hangar “bang” every time a strong thermal hits.
At 3 PM, it was 41 dgr. C and the clouds nearly reached the field , but you could fly to them and now the SE looks fantastic as well. Nice fast short flights would be possible!
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I looked at the South African Nationals yesterday and mainly had eye for the open class as I know most of the pilots in this class.
Today I will do so too , but will have a quick look at the 15 m. class with only 3 competitors. In this class Nico La Roux [ LS 8] is already nearly 2000 points ahead of the runner up Rob Tiffin in the ASW 27, after 6 days of flying and most probably a few to go as they continue till the 21th.
The club class IS Konrad Stark, he flew himself already as one and only competitor to 5818 points, finishing EVERY day.
Yesterday the open class had a set 391 km. task and it was not the Jonker family, neither the Goudriaan family who won the daily prize.
It was John Coutts [NZ] living already for a long time in South Africa, flying in the NIMBUS 3DM , with German pilot Andreas Siebold who was the fastest for the day and they were really fast, flying the 391 km. in just over 2 hours, so a speed of 187.02 km./h. What about that!!??
They “travelled” together with Bernd Hubka also from Germany and finished with half a minute difference; 637 and 611 points.
Some tried to beat the storm front coming in. They managed!
After 6 tasks the overall score looks like this, with still a few days to go;1. Laurens [4996] , 2. Pieter Nouwens [4976] 3. Uys [4950] 4. Oscar [4947] and 5. Attie [4880] ALL VERY CLOSE and ALL flying JS1 C except for Attie [JS 1B].
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2 Times a 1.300 km. in a VENTUS 2cm /18 m. is not bad. According to the German pilot Philipp Keller, flying from Kiripotib it could have been more but a thunderstorm over the field spoiled the day.The day before he declared a 1000 FAI triangle and flew it.
One of the young 1000 km.-camp pilots at Bitterwasser, flew 1.320 km. and mentioned ” he started too late and landed too early” .
Several good flights again from Namibia and South Africa.
From Temora Brian flew 997.9 km. in the LS 10 !!!
From Narromine Pepe added another nice long flight, 987 km.
More tomorrow.
Cheers Ritz