Uvalde, wholy soaring spot!

Goodday.

Sorry to write only so late on this blog! Why? Well, I arrived August 4th in the evening here in Uvalde after a 5 hr drive from Houston, and the morning after we started a 6 days in a row of flying (one training day, five contest days). A day goes from 7 am untill 9 pm, that hurts :-)! At 7:30 am at the airport to fill up the glider with water and put it in the grid. Then quickly back to the RV for a breakfast, then at 10:30 briefing, at 12:00 lining up of the gliders at the runway, at about 13:30 first start....landing at about 18:30, getting logger files out....and so on. And that when you dont land out....but I dont do that :-)!

Why am I at the Preworlds? Well, not because of my gliding skills during competitions:-)! But at the beginning of the year Jeroen sent me a email that an american guy named Boyd Willat was looking for a glider for the JWGC in Musbach. After talking to my syndicat I decided to go for the adventure, what seems to work out pretty well now for me compared to Boyd with the shitty weather over there....

While I sit and write this text here in the shadow under a tree during our rest day, I can´t imagine having flown in this heat for 6 days already...it feels like a sitting on a wood fire....but anyhow...

The first day was a training day, getting started on a for me new type of glider, the discus a, in a new environment. But who cares, no guts no glory! Thank god that I bought a battery pack for my Oudie just before the contest, because there was no navigation system installed in the glider, only two loggers without nav screens....well, I decided to put it a litttle bit over half full with water (about 120 liters) for the first flight. The task sent us far over the hilly sites north of Uvalde where you better not outland (later on more about that). It took me some time to get used to the units displayed on the instruments, but my Oudie did it al the european way! I passed the 10000 ft marker and it was a fun flight with coming back home.

Contest day 1 untill 2 went well. Day 1 was slow, day 2 I made it over the 100 kph (finally!).

Day 3 was an AAT-task with min. time 4hr30min. Everything went well, the last sector was over the hilly sites north of Texas. I arrived at this sector with a 106 kph speed, so I had to fly further into this sector to not being too early at the finish. Just before this sector I had a very good thermal up to 2600 m MSL....from there I went straight down for an outside landing after leaving the sector towards Uvalde....no thermal found anymore, I couldn t believe it. Would I not have flown further into that sector, I would have been home...4 other gliders landed outside...kak (is shit)!!! Thank God that the landing went well, I couldn t make it to a ranch or something better to land as this field, but no damage! Here the SPOT did its fantastic work (allthough I had a network on my mobile phone). By pressing the HELP key an SMS with my coordinates arrived at the mobile phone of Brat, Garret´s father. He sent Jeppe, who was here for a few days, with the trailer on the way! An hour and a half after my landing he was there. In the meantime I was lucky to meet a couple passing by on a quad drinking beers. It was a happy moment! It was the first time in Texas that the saying "In Texas the cows are prettier than the women" was not true.... But her boyfriend was there as well...Why does God punish me everytime?? But luckily enough they were the neighbours of the the person possessing my landing field and the closed fence around it. So at the time Jeppe arrived we could directly start our work...

Day 4, well, what sould I say....Filling up the glider with 180 liters of water, driving it to the grid, having a flat tyre arriving there, put the glider in the trailer, fix the tyre (thanks Francois) because a new tyre would only arrive later that day. So rebuilding the glider, filling it up again with 180 liters of water, driving it to the grid: AGAIN a FLAT TYRE!!! So put the glider in his box again, putting on the new tyre (thanks again Francois) which had  just arrived, and rebuild the glider once more....fill it up once more....drive it to the grid once more....now it was already late (I missed breakfast, briefing and the start in my class), so I put the glider behind the 18m, to have some time to prepare the flight....It was funny that I only during flight realised that the first leg was 180 km out to the mexican border....A big thanks to Jeppe, without him this day I would not have flown!!! He also managed a Hamburger for me so that I didnt have to start with an empty stomach....So I arrived at the airport at around 8 am, to finally be ready for the flight at 2:15 pm without having stopped to get things done....and offcourse, it was the day that I got the best result in points for me personally (over 600 I think)...

Day 5 the fall back: tired, lower cloud base, less visibility, too often too low....but made it back to Uvalde, thats whats counting for me!!!

Now a day of rest! Speak to you soon!!!!

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightbook.html?sp=2011&st=olcp&rt=olc&pi=20759

Willem