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Latest news
June 8, 2006
Sunny morning! What will happen today?
9.00 Another sunny and pleasant morning on which I noticed that gliders are at 05 which means we have a N. stream ,so this "might" be good, according to the locals, but I leave the meteo over to the experts.
Yesterdays' lecture was impressive and a great crowd, about 100 people visited the briefing hangar to listen to the story behind the "Concordia".Both Johannes Dillinger and Gerhard Waibel did a great job and had an inspiring talk, about designing this new high performance 28 m. span open class single seater, with a max. weight of 850 k. Its maidenflight is supposed to be in 2008. We are looking forward to this first flight.
As a Dutch citizen I was proud to see that people as Prof. Loek Boermans and the Technical University of Delft have such huge imput in this project.
It seems the sauna here is great. No lake, but nevertheless very good! Enjoy it when possible.
Tasks for today;
We have an A and a B task for all 4 classes.
St class ;
A task;polygon with 4 points ,distance 229 km.
B task 185.8 km.
15 m.;
A task; polygon with 4 points, distance 245.7 km
B task204.3 km
18 m. class
A task;polygon with 3 points, distance 268.3 km
B task 207 km.
Open class;
A task; polygon with 4 points distance 264.9 km
B taksk 203.4 km.
To briefing now!
10.15 Briefing from June 8, day 3 for the competition, was short and to the point.
-- v Pos is in 15 m. class today!
--Happy Birthday to chief steward Dick Bradley. Gerhard Waibel straight away song Happy Birthday and we all joined in! Have a nice day Dick and a good year in great spirit and health!
The weather; It will be difficult, but as Saka said: " We will try"!
We are under the influence of a high over the UK which is extending to Scandinavia.High and medium clouds associated with warm advection will affect the competition area today, according to the meteo lady [from the picture].
She expects weak thermal activity up to 1000 m. and her own opinion is, that the S. will be better today then the N. So A tasks are set to the N. and valid till further notice and B tasks to the S. Aircrafts are flying up N. and S. to check the areas! First possible start at 11.00. At this moment the wind is from the NW.
One of the members of the USA team gave his laundry, just 1 load, to the staff from the hotel he is staying and paid; 1000 kronor .Poor guy, feel sorry for him! Almost 120 Euro. But according to the locals, this is normal for hotels and in fact nobody does it in Sweden. Note; There is a washing machine here too.
" WHEN " there will be NO flying, pilots and crews are welcome at the University in town for the opening lecture from OSTIV, at 3 pm..
11.30 First start at 11 was postponed to 11.30 and at 11.15, Robert announced a further delay, till "further notice" this time.
18 m task A has been changed to task B. Will keep you informed.
In between lots of pilots found a new way of flying. When it is not possible to fly in the air , they fly from the ground. Several pilots flew already with them and the Dutch team more or less drove up to Stockholm, to buy 5 packages of radio controlled foam planes, with little black props on the back of the wings. They fly for 7 minutes- plus and gave a lot of fun yesterday evening and just now as XT pilot Roland , who flew the 18 m. task yesterday with a speed of 106 km/h , flies one now in front of the gridded gliders. It is funny to see how little sparrows attack, as they seem to see this toy as some kind of enemie!
Back to the field, but still not a lot of action and all tow planes are still in front of my office.
12.10 Just caught up with Goran Ax, who knows this area well;" With a smile he said:"The weather is always strange when you have a competition. Don't know why that is ".
We saw that the weather in 30 minutes had changed to much better at the NW again. It is unbelievable how quickly the weather patterns change here. Indeed the overcast is getting thinner now. At the moment it looks good to the NW, but as Goran said we still might have local phenomenas as the winds from the Lakes both N. [Malaren ] and S.[Hjalmaren] from Ekeby, can have their influence with some kind of sea breeze effects, as they are still very cold.
Patience and waiting.....waiting and patience , very familiar for gliding. CU after lunch.
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