JS1 and other results

So Andy took day 2 in the British 18m nationals in the JS1 and he is in the overall lead. Congratulations. The forecast for the next four days looks dismal.
In Lithuania the weather got the better of the standard and club classes and they ALL outlanded. In Hungary in the Woman's Worlds it went better and some good speeds were flown. In the German 18m Nationals Reinhard Schramme took day 1 (I wonder if he is now flying the jet version of the Ventus?) and in the open class Natalie Leuben came a very creditable 5th place.
EY

80 on the roll ...

Andy Davis (80) was second on day 1 of the British 18m Nationals, and at the moment is first on day 2 - but there are still many results to come in. Holding thumbs for Andy in the JS1

Ulf sent these pictures from the IMGC

The pictures

These pictures followed shortly after the story

Adriaan reporting ...

This from Adri and Adriaan

Hi,
Had an epic flight yesterday. 24 July 2009
Very few gliders in the region got away, we were the only only one from La Mote thanks to the great instructor of mine. The treetop flying was an eye opener but we eventually got to the higher peaks and connected with the wave. Restricted by the complicated airspace we could only go to 3400 meters.Wavebars are set up and strong surface winds are blowing, we are sheltered with no wind at the airfield. if I cant fly we will go and meet Klaus Olman he operates from a nearby airfield.
"new mail" 26 July
Was fortunate to spend 7.5 hours with Klaus Ohlman flying the "Park Course" in the Alps in his Stemme.The conditions were epic with strong climbs and patches of wave. It was an experience of a lifetime to spend a day flying with Klaus, he commented that I "fly vey well " but I think he was just polite :) We flew as far north as possible, I could see Mt Blanc but we could not get to it due to clouds. Flew over the glaciers and ice lakes and south towards Vinon to get the convergence back. Landed as it was getting dark was about 21h00. We are now in the land of the Torra and Tappas will be returing to France later today.
Will not need a tug will be buying a Stemme :)
Regards
Adriaan & Adri"
I so wish ...

IMGC 2009 - Ulf takes it.

14 th International Military Gliding Competition 2009
It is all over, tonight it is the party and tomorrow morning Ulf steps onto the winnner's podium. I bet he will have a very big smile. Congratulations ULF.
Congratulations also to Benno who with Rene Heise (the famous German meteorologist and met man for the German team - he also helps Klaus Ohlmann out with the odd weatherforecast) took the Open Class. Volker also finds himself in a respectable position at 17th.
EY

IMGC Day 4

Ulf placed 2nd yesterday, but increased his lead to 55 points overall - it is far from over with three days to go. Benno & Kie are comfortably in the lead in the Open and Volker is 17th overall in Club. Go Volker, go.
In Lithuania the EGC is about to start - they had their first official practice yesterday.
EY

Ulf reports on his day 3 win.

Ulf wrote as follows regarding his flight in the 17th - in winning day 3 of the IMGC

Hi, Sven,

what a day. Only two finishers in the standard class, as you saw. When we were at about 80 km on final a heavy thunderstorm crossed Holzdorf that destroyed parts of my tent. When we were at the last turning point the thunderstorm was at about 25 km in front of us. We were at about 8 gliders, most of them tryed to reach an airfield 12 km north of Holzdorf, but thad could not work. So nearly all of them flew back to the last turningpoint Brand, an old airfield out of use. I was happy to find a 1.2 m lift and then thought that the prefrontal part of the thunderstorm must give lift. Meanwhile Holzdorf was free and I saw the chance to reach it via south with a final turn to the west because i saw the thunderstorm move to the northeast. So i flew nearer to the front and got lifts up to 4 m until I had a plus of 1100 m to Holzdorf. I could surround the thunderstorm, had to cross 2 local showers of medium strength, lost thereby 800m and reached the airbase in 300 m.

It was a noncritical flight for me be.cause I always saw the chance to escape to the south. I think my bad weather experiences with helicopters helped a lot to realize the weather situation.

Nevertheless it was one of the flights I´ll always remember.

When you want you can see the flight in OLC.

Greetings

Ulf

The OLC flight is at http://www3.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1935621200


Photo's posted on the website.

EY

PS - they did not fly over the weekend and today sounds like many outlandings.

IMGC Day 3

Ulf about to launch with Angelika holding the wing.
EY


Only two finishers in the standard class and EX is first. That takes Ulf to first overall (with the second place one point behind). Keep it up Ulf. Benno is far ahead in the Open class and Volker (and the rest of the club class did not fly in yesterdays stormy weather).

IMGC 2009

Volker, in the DG300 on the grid, with Angelika next to him.

Today they are all on big tasks

EY

Holzdorf DAY 1

A great day -

Benno first in Open
Ulf second (by only 1 point!!!) in Standard Class
and Volker third (by only 2 points!!!) in Club Class

KEEP IT UP GUYS

EY

Holzdorf

No task for 15m and club classes today - too small a weather window - so Ulf and Volker sit on the ground, but Benno in an ASH 25E will have his hands full.
The link is at http://www.imgc.de/index.php?page=start&lng=de

EY

EGC results

15th FAI European Gliding Championships Type : Continental
Date: 27.06 - 11.07.2009
Location: Nitra (Slovakia)
Final Results :
Open Class - Overall
1st: Peter Harvey GBR
2nd: Laurent Aboulin FRA
3rd: Steve Jones GBR
15M Class - Overall
1st: Louis Bouderlique FRA
2nd: Lukasz Wójcik POL
3rd: Christophe Ruch FRA
18M Class - Overall
1st: Russell Cheetham GBR
2nd: Mike Young GBR
3rd: Karol Staryszak POL

Looking at the results it was a difficult contest - on many days substantive portions of the fleet outlanded.

EY

Le weekend - and other snippets

Twitter said: Just in! Tom Kelley(711) is "our" national champion with 7845 pts. 2nd: Gary Ittner (P7)with 7782 pts. 3rd: Bill Elliot(JS1) with 7744
Well done to yet another outstanding performance of the JS1!!
In Nitra only a few days left in the Europeans and in Germany the International Military starts on Monday (a working week for the rest of us) Good luck to Ulf Dallmann, Volker Fiebig and Benno Beesten - OLC shows that they have all been training.

The outlook for FAWC this weekend is as follows:

"Saturday
Surface wind - WNW 30, 5000ft WNW 40, 10000ft W40, 15000ft WNW 50, 20000ft WNW40Severe surface turbulence, windshear low at 8m/s per 4 kmWave from 11 000ft upwardsCloud 3-5/8 3000 - 5000ftMax 14.2 C Dewpoint 6.7C Trigger 13.3Expect 1.0 ms - 1.3 ms to 5000ftCloud 3/8 from 4500 - 5500ftBoundary layer energy 37 J/kg
Sunday
Surface wind - NW 30, 5000ft NW 50, 10000ft W 90, 15000ft WNW 90, 20000ft 130 WNWWindshear is 18ms per 4km Severe surface turbulence, and lighter higher upRain is predictedWave from 16000ftCloud 3-5/8 from 2000ft - 6800ftMax 11.5C Dewpoint 8.9C Trigger 12.5 C !!!!Expect 0.5 ms to 3000ftCloud 2000ft - 7000ftBoundary layer energy 3 J/kg"
In summary - Saturday may just offer the opportunity to do Renosterhoek and back - i don't know that it has been done in July yet? Perhaps wave outbound and ridge running back? Any takers?
EY

Johan Gericke reporting from Ephrata on the JS1

Johan Gericke reports from Ephrata on the USA 18m nationals, where Dale Kramer (the comeback kid was the daywinner on Monday, and where the Bill Elliot, last year's champ, is in second place in the JS 1, a few points behind Tom Kelly (#711) - sorry Tom, my money is on Bill ;-)

"Greetings from Seattle

I have had an unusually interesting trip so far. Usually my trips are not much more than seeing the inside of hotels and conference rooms, which are the same everywhere. This time has been different.

In ten days I have had winter and summer and then winter and summer again. This morning it is winter, in the middle of summer. I have been on three continents and two islands. I have been in 10 different aircraft types, although three of those never took off.

I had Sunday and Monday off. In thise two days I flew a 1953 v-tail Beachcraft Bonanza (as P2, naturally) for over 200 km, helped to de-rig a DG1000 and driven many 100’s of kilometres – just exploring. On Monday alone I saw different landscapes of lakes, forested mountains, Karoo-like bush, harsh life-deprived rock and large rivers. I saw the shimmer of heat on a runway and snow on the mountains right next to the road in the middle of summer. In one day I used the heater in the car, the aircon on full blast and then the heater again. I have driven through the city listening to blues and jazz, through mountains listening to classical and through “corn” fields listening to hardcore country music:

We can take you for a ride on my big green tractor
We can go slow or make it go faster
Down through the woods and out to the pasture...

After this introduction, I would like to share the soaring highlight of yesterday. I drove out to a place called Ephrata (sounds like ‘freighter’ when the locals say it) which is where gliding happens around here in summer. When I got there I was somewhat surprised to find that the national 18m championships were happening. The field was just starting to launch. I was even more surprised, as I walked onto the launch area, to find myself next to an 18m ship with the contest call sign “JS1” boldly on the tail and “Revelation” on the side below the canopy. What surprised me most was how suddenly I felt proudly South African when I heard a few local pilots remark “Oh, that JS1’s b’n doin’ pretty good this week...”

The JS1 turned out to be S/N 2, apparently used as a marketing sample and lent to US glider pilot Bill Elliott for the duration of the contest. I helped out a bit at the launch point and saw it take off. A very promising Cu street stretched for miles in the direction of the day’s task. Cloud base later turned out to be 9000ft, over a 1200 ft runway. When the field was launched, and clearly no chance for me to get a flight on a contest day, I went exploring some more. I was back when the first gliders returned. One had landed out. The JS1 came back first after a 3.5 hour area task. I did not stay to see what the others did, but SeeYou showed an average climb rate of around 3.5 m/s in thermals and an average speed of over 150 km/h for the JS1. Bill was beaming.

Bill, who normally flies an ASW27, is not new to the JS1. He won the USA 18m Nationals in it last year in May. So far he is in second place this year. The contest ends on Thursday.

I took the opportunity to try on the JS1 cockpit for size. It’s good for at least my six-foot-one-and-half length. Bill is quite a bit shorter than I am, but needs more width, and is also happy with the cockpit. We were both impressed with the superb view over the shoulder. Bill confirms easy handling and super climbing performance. Even though it is only S/N 2, it nicely finished, not giving the impression of a prototype at all.

Related links:
http://www.jonkersailplanes.com/latestnews.htm

Today it is back to hotels and conference rooms for the rest of this week.

Fly safely.

Johan Gericke"

Dear Johan, i did some flying in #1 and you cannot tell that it is a prototype either, well finished and flies really well.
EY

Looking ahead

This weekend may be more interesting than what we have had the last few weekends.

This from Karma on Storm Chasing SA.
"e:Frontal system 09-12 Jul 2009 7 Hours, 1 Minute ago
Karma: 4
Looking at various models and forecasts, it is hard to categorise this system, except to say the weather is going to deteriorate over the next 4 days!A frontal system is approaching Cape Town, but will weaken before landfall on the Fri 10th Jul.The remant is forecast to turn into a cutoff-low over the Northern Cape. This will bring cold wet and windy weather on Sat 11th, but not much rain in CT itself.A further front is expected to develop, bringing strong winds and moderate amounts of rain to CT on Sun 12th. This will be followed by very cold air on Mon 13th.There is a possibility of snow, although it is too soon to make a prediction (Tue 7th)."
EY

Wave, wave and wave

Ari Cotton sent this picture from the videocam at Worcester, taken early Sunday morning (not a breath of wind on the surface, and with a heavy inversion, which you can see). Don't know if anyone got up there.

a beautiful picture ...

A beautiful pre-frontal picture of (an obscured) Table Mountain