You should never win the pre-worlds because it never happened that person won the worlds. I think it also applies for the training days: We screwed up big time on the first contest day. The weather wasn’t so good, the thermals were blue. So we decided to go way off course to get away from the cirrus clouds, but we shouldn’t have. Flying in the blue is pretty simple here: fly on the course line and wait until you hit that 3 m/s, or more... Hard lesson learned, because it costs us 300 points. Willem was having some trouble as well: the power Flarms we are carrying interfered with his logger. Luckily they accepted his file from his Oudie.
In the mean while I’m getting used to this life style. Get out of bed, bring your rigged glider to the runway and relax until you can start. You fly somewhere between 4 and 5 hours, you rig your glider and then jump in the pool with a nice cold beer. Flying competition can be sooo relaxing!
The second contest day: Well, it wasn’t Francois day. Competitors for next year should be sure to bring at least a couple of reserve tubes for the landing gear (and all other rotating rubber). There are a lot of twigs with nasty needles sticking out. Francois was the lucky one to get the first flat tire… On top of that he damaged his glider trying to repair it. So unfortunately he had to skip the day!
At the briefing they told that the cumulus would dry out. So I thought not to start too late. The first one and a half leg were very slow (115 kph) and then the weather got rrrrealy great: 4/8 of cumulus clouds at 8500 feet and thermals up to 5 m/s (from bottom till top!) which made cruise flight possible at an average of 150 kph! The flight was great and the speed controlled the damage of the first part. I set myself a new goal for this competition: try to hit the 150 kph. The magic number over here is 100 mph (165 kph), but I find it hard to imagine that is possible with these older type of 18 meter gliders. But you never know: Let’s go step by step… J
At the briefing they told that the cumulus would dry out. So I thought not to start too late. The first one and a half leg were very slow (115 kph) and then the weather got rrrrealy great: 4/8 of cumulus clouds at 8500 feet and thermals up to 5 m/s (from bottom till top!) which made cruise flight possible at an average of 150 kph! The flight was great and the speed controlled the damage of the first part. I set myself a new goal for this competition: try to hit the 150 kph. The magic number over here is 100 mph (165 kph), but I find it hard to imagine that is possible with these older type of 18 meter gliders. But you never know: Let’s go step by step… J
When you think a glider pilots life doesn’t get better than this, Garret installed the beer tender! So, i guess our special guest Jeppe just came in time...
PS: If you want to follow our results: http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/contestresultsdetail.asp?id=2174&display=results
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