9.30 AM;
Wow, what a great night we had
yesterday evening....and what a perfect morning we have today!!!!
First already about this morning as several people, including
Finnish, looked up at the bleu skies and just said; "It looks like a
1000 km. day today!" And indeed it looks great! Already before 9
the clouds were popping up and skies are deep blue. Beautiful. More
weather after briefing. By the way the first launch is at 11 AM and
pilots and crew can grid between 8.30 and 10.45 on runway 26 left!
Yesterday evening we had the Finnish evening and the welcome by the
organizers. The young Finnish team was presented by Teemu, who flew
the juniors in Hus Bos in 2005. Their presentation was very nice
with a slide show from the 5 participating boys, partly made in
South Africa were this young team had their training camp . Very
impressive and as I heard they all went on their own expense!
Later Teemu got them on stage and with sunglasses on they were
cheered on by the many young pilots and their crews. The {Norwegian}
salmon was superb at the dinner where we all were invited by the
organizers. 70 kilo of salmon and more kilo's of fresh potatoes,
with fresh cold vegetables. A superb welcome in Finland.THANK
YOU to the organizers and the Finnish team for a lovely
night. Now we are going to look what today will bring. Back after
briefing, which is at 10. See you soon. 11.AM;
Briefing is over!
With a short welcome -word the president of the jury was introduced.
In 1961, the young pilots here were not even born then, Tor flew his
2d International competition here in Finland.
Welcome to Tor Johannessen, 80 years young now!
Tasks were set and you might have found them already on the task and
result site, but here they are as well;
CLUB CLASS; polygon with 4 points and 356 km.They
will be launched first from 26 left.
STANDARD CLASS; polygon with 3 points and 385.3 km.Launch
from 26 right.
The weather "looks flyable" was the understatement
of the day!!!!With a high pressure zone ABOVE us,there will be no
problems at all today for our pilots, though as Heikki said with a
smile , there are some clouds passing by from Nitra, where on June
27 the EGC starts for open, 18 m and 15 m class, which can "touch"
the East of the task area.
With 21 dgr. it will be a lovely day for us on the ground
too.Visibility is 40 km.plus and the cloud base at 2000 m.
General messages from the competition director;
ALWAYS have reserve height for final glide!!!!!!
An outlanding in water is the LAST option!!!
An outlanding into the forest is OUT OF QUESTION!!!!!
As you always have to be prepared for everything ,Silva has written
on the site a little story called "Ditching" about a landing on
water.
Silva urged the pilots to fly carefully, doing normal patterns, NO
aerobatic turns , movements or low passes.
He is a great director with a lot of natural authority and a joke
between the serious items.
Today we have at 6 PM the first TC meeting and straight after at 7
the TC's and some invited guests , as jury members and stewards will
be brought by bus to a very special place for a welcome drink [
cocktail party] . More about that tomorrow.
Silva send the pilots away with the message;" Let's be careful out
there, have a nice flight."
Launches are in progress so I better go out now to see how it goes.
Till now everything here seems to go very smoothly! 12.45
PM;
The weather is just astonishing good! First launch was at 11.15
and in 38 minutes the club class was in the air. The standard class
followed straight away and in 1 .15 minutes all pilots were launched.
The field -marshallers are doing a great job.
There are 8 tugs flying here, so 1 tug for 10 pilots.[a bit more as
we have 82 !]
2 Of my friends are towing, as I was welcomed this morning by
Martti, who is a tuggie as well as Kari.
During the briefing Silva said very CLEARLY, walk the wing on the
right site "if you don't want to have your head chopped off", that
worked as everybody stuck to the set rule. It sounds a bit rough but
it brought some laughter and more important the message was
understood!
Later during the day I will be back with more news about this
beautiful FIRST OFFICIAL PRACTISE day here in Rayskala.
So stand by! 2 PM;
As the weather is so good, Silva expects the first pilots back
around 3. So with big speed they are hopefully flying around their
TP's.I can only "hear" them sing in their gliders and concentrate on
going fast, what a great day!
The start gates have opened at 11.59 for club class and 12.39 for
standard class.
The first to start in club class was the Finnish pilot Jussi
Virtanen at 12.06 , while his 2 mates in the same class started half
an hour later.
The Germans started early and the French followed not long after.
In standard class 2 of the UK pilots were the first to go at
12.46.The German and Finnish pilots left at 12.52/3 .
Look for the start times at the result site!
In between I spoke with the tugmaster and found out the names from
the several tow planes.
There are 3 Pawnees, 1 Cessna agwagon,1 Rallye,1 Jodel and 2
specific Finnish planes , a towmaster PIK 23 and a Sehinu ,a PIK 27.
Back later with more! Stand by! 4 PM;
The pilots did not quite make 3 but the first pilot arriving was
here at 3.44.TK arrived at that time.
About 5 minutes later the first groupe arrived with the French
pilots; 57.C41.ED,C12,99,5A and CX.
At this moment more pilots might come in, but I thought I give you
the first arrivals and rush out again.
The weather is still fantastic , but at some places you can see some
high cirrus.
I hope the young German photographer who left this morning in the
backseat of a Nimbus 4, made not only great pictures from flying
gliders but also from the air full of clouds, so you can share what
we see and feel here.
I will have a word with this young man ,[I shook hands with him this
morning and made an appointment], as I was most impressed with the
pictures he made during the WGC in Luesse.
Rush out again to get more info! 4.02 PM;
I did not miss out on any gliders , they " kindly waited till I
was back" at the field!
At 4.02 , ET,W8, ER, FL, TB[?], FB, HS, arrived and
about 5 minutes later a groupe of 6 gliders
2T, KS, RD, FL, 74, 4J, NV and KL.
More news later and please look for the results at the site , as
they will be there as soon as possible! 5 PM;
At 4.45 we had about 20 gliders still out.
At 4.25, it was really peakhour at the field.One
big row of white gliders behind their cars were moved to the
trailers. It looked like a huge white cord around the field, as
gliders can land direct or finish and they land then on an other
part of the field.
I heard that pilots were very happy with the weather but not all of
them with their performance. I also heard that some pilots flew 119
km/h in club class.WOW.
At 5.15 still 5 pilots out.The cirrus I mentioned
was the "stuff" coming from Nitra.
So please look for the results later as this was a great day!!!!Off
to the TC meeting now and the cocktail party where the Mayor of
Loppi invited us in a Hunting Cottage ;Gustav Mannerheim. This is
also a museum !Tomorrow I will tell you more about this and about
the exciting flights of today.
CU tomorrow Ritz
if you want to react. |
2206
