Air Transat provides Sponsorship for the Team

Through Hans Juergensen who flies for Air Transat, the team received the following from Air Transat:

"Air Transat is pleased to confirm its participation to the 2008 World Gliding Championships. For this occasion, Air Transat will provide you one (1) pair of airline tickets for two (2) persons.
The prize:

• Two (2) confirmed passes from Toronto or Montreal to any France destination.

We wish you great success with your event!"


We are still trying to determine the best use of these tickets, but are looking at Auctioning them on Ebay.  Based on current ticket prices we hope that we can raise about $1800 for the tickets.

Of course if any SAC member is thinking about a trip to St-Auban - I am sure we can come up with a good deal on these tickets for you!

Some Good Winter Practice

During Reading Week, Virginia and I took the motorhome down to Seminole Lake Gliderport in Florida where I managed to get 5 good flights.

Walter Weir was again kind enough to lend me his ASW-27 (2W). I had two flights in 2W, the first was a 199 km flight on a mediocre day, but it helped me get the feel of the 27 back.

A couple of days later, Rich Owen and I flew the DG-1000 for almost 2 hours and struggled with 25-30 kt winds at altitude. It was a fun flight and good practice. It was so windy, that in one thermal we drifted 4.5 km in 8 turns!

A couple of days later after a cold front passed, I flew 2W again This time I was able to fly a task with Ed Hollestelle in the LS10. We flew about 320 km together and it gave me a great opportunity to see how I was flying the 27 as Ed and I stayed together for most of the flight. At one point we decided to try different routes home and both seemed to work about the same. I went downwind of a hole caused by smoke and Ed took the upwind route.

The next day, Ed landed at 3 pm after a 100 km/hr 345 km flight and I launched in the LS10 ten minutes later and flew another 190 km before landing just before 5:30. Together we flew over 500 km in consecutive flights that day.

Ed offered me another chance to fly the LS10 and I had a nice 380 km flight running streets with a good SE wind. There was a significant difference in weather north and south of the airport with almost 6000 ft cloudbase to the north and 4000 ft to the south. With the low cloudbase around the airport, many others landed early as they did not want to venture downwind towards the better clouds.

The LS10 was a pleasure to fly. Having owned an LS6 and LS8, I was immediately at home in the 10. It handled just like the other LS gliders and took little effort to thermal. My only regret is that I didn't fill it with water on the last flight, with the cloudstreets and strong thermals it would have really flattened out the glide.