Back in Canada and lessons learned

Virginia and I arrived back in Toronto last night where we were met by Dave Carter after clearing custom's and chatted with him for the 20 minutes it took for our luggage to arrive on the carousel.

After picking up the luggage we were met by Martin Brassard who drove us back to his house where a very happy dog was waiting for us. This is the longest she has been away from us in seven years! Fortunately, she knows Martin and Christina really well and can tolerate Cosmo's persistence.

Our last day in Germany was spent touring the Alexander Schliecher Factory. We had a personal 2 1/2 hour guided tour and saw everything. We saw SOSA's two K-21's on the production line and were also able to see the new ASH-30 in development.

Now it is back to SOSA for the Youth Camp for the next 10 days.

Some lessons that we learned at this contest were real eye-openers. In North America, we consider contest flying an individual effort, while at the Worlds it is really a team effort. Besides the obvious team effort of multiple pilots in one class helping each other, the large teams have a huge support staff on the ground as well. These people are looking at real time satellite to advise of changing weather conditions, spying on the other teams to determine when they will start and of course passing all of this information to their pilots.

This is something that we were missing, although by having a shared frequency with the Irish and Japanese team, we were able to garner some good information by listening to them.

Another lesson is the need for a good ground station and high antenna so the team on the ground can make contact with the pilots throughout the task area. We were extremely limited by our handheld radios.

Another big challenge for us was the 220 V electrical supply in Europe. All of our battery chargers/ radio chargers were 110 V and running them through transformers was not very effective.

All in all the competition was an amazing experience and I would like to thank everyone here who sent their support to us throughout the contest and I would also like to thank everyone who helped support us through donations during our fund-raising - you made this possible!

Wasserkuppe

Yesterday, Virginia and I drove the glider back to Poppenhausen and today we drove up the the Wasserkuppe to see this famous gliding site. The site is marked by the fleiger Denkmals a monument that was erected in 1923 to honour early gliding pioneers who lost their lives during the early days of the quest for motorless flight.





The Wasserkuppe is actually the name of the mountain and flying activities have been going on there since about 1910. Today, there is a soaring club/school/ commercial operation. I counted 3 Duo's and 3 K-21's that were busy doing flights for visitors, and there were hundreds of people standing around watching.

There was also para-gliding for the mentally unstable on another corner of the hill top.

and RC gliders ridge soaring on another corner. There were some amazing models. I saw one model of a Ka6 that had a wing span of about 2 m. In the air it looked real.


Tomorrow we are off to the Schliecher factory for a morning tour and a look at SOSA's K-21's that are currently in production.

Berlin Sight Seeing

On the last rain day virginia and I took the train into Berlin for a little sight seeing. The first picture shows the Reichstag building complete with dome. The last time i was in Berlin in 1992, there was no dome. It had been destroyed in the second World War and only recently rebuilt.


This is the victory column (Siegessäule) built in the ;ate 1800's to comemorate the vitories in the Danish- Prussian, Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars.


The Bradenburg Gate is a major attraction in Berlin and was one of the first places where the fall of the communist GDR government was celebrated before the unification of Germany. This picture is taken from the east side of the gate in what was once the communist area of Berlin.

Starbucks is everywhere - I though this picture was quite a juxtaposition of the symbol of capitalism - Starbucks - located in the former communist zone of Berlin right beside the Bradenburg gate! It was not there in 1992 during my last visit.

Tomorrow, Virginia and I head back to Poppenhusen to drop off the glider and we will stay there a couple of days and visit the Wasserkuppe and particularly the Gliding Museum at the Wasserkuppe.

Day 8 - more cirrus

The task for today was a 422 km triangle to the east and then south.  The eastern most turnpoint was in Poland as was most of the second leg.  The run to the first turn was quite good and I averaged 134 km/hr.  Then the cirrus came in for the second leg.  My speed on this leg was a meager 66 km/hr!  In hind sight I deviated too much to chase the cu and flew 123 km to cover the leg distance of 88 km.

 

On the third leg I was able to connect with the gaggle of the British and French Teams and thought that we were doing well, as it turns out they were having a bad day and our gaggle was 20 km/hr slower then the rest of the class.  In this gaggle were 5 of the top 10 pilots in our class, so I thought I was in good company.  Our gaggle averaged 2.3 knot lift on the 173 km leg home and the other gaggles in front of us averaged over 3 kts.

 

Tomorrow is the last day and it looks like a rain day.

Dave

Day 7 - a costly minute

Yesterday, I taggged the Berlin airspace and as a result was scored as a landout at that point - 10 km into the task!  I was trying to re-boot my PDA and wasn't paying enough attention to navigation.  This was a very costly minute as it dropped me from 18th on the day to last and also dropped my overall position from 23 to 38.

 

Despite this I had a reasonable flight yesterday and as you can see from the picture the conditions were pretty good.  The wind was blowing again at 25-30 kts, but some nice cloud streets formed.  On the one leg into the wind I managed 102 km/hr with an L/D of 93 flying along a cloudstreet.  The last leg was across the cloudstreets, but still with a headwind component and it was quite difficult as we had to jump from street to street.

Dave

Rain Day

Today is another rain day and at the 1230 briefing the day was cancelled, so Virginia and I are on our way into Berlin for the rest of the day to see the sights.

Dave

Day 6

Today we had a mixed bag of weather with cu spreading out to start the day and then cirrus moving in later.  Fortunately, the moisture dried out to stop the spread out and most of the cirrus stayed south of the task area.

 

Unfortunately, for the third day in a row we had a turnpoint at Torgau which has been a hole every other day and today was no different.  Torgau is just south of the Elbe river and there is not much lift along the river.  Needless to say I had a bad time on that leg and spent most of it between 2200 - 3300 AGL..

 

I was 95 km/hr today and most of the pack was in the 105-110 range, so the few holes lost me lots of time and speed.

 

There have been very few days here where the weather has not had some sort of trick to it, be it wind, or spread out or cirrus clouds, but the airmasses have been unstable enough that we can still get around.

 

 

 

 

Dave

Day 5

Today was another good soaring day in Lusse.  The forecast called for the clouds to spread out and cause the lift to cycle - which it did, but the best lift was in the 6 kt range today and I hit 6000 ft once.

 

The preliminary scores show me at 17th on the day with a speed of 107 compared to the winner at 116.  I thought I had a good start with a cloud street lined up to the first turn, but then I ran into a hole at the second turn and that slowed me down.  The guys who started 15 minutes later didn't have the hole as the good clouds drifted into the turn with them.  But it could have turned out the other way too.

 

All in all, i am happy with the flight, but of course would rather have been faster!

Dave

Day 4 - Flight Log

It was the last two climbs that made all the difference yesterday. They got me back up to about 5000 ft and gave the range to get across the lowlands and round the third turn and then try the forest on the way home. In the end, I was about 2000 feet below glideslope and the day was over!

Day 4 - a mass landout

Today everyone in the class decided to play start gate roulette. The conditions were forecast to be blue, so no one wanted to be the first to leave. The one thing that concerned me was the forecast 6 pm end of convection and we were on a 405 km task with a gate opening of 1350, and then the games started. In the end we all landed out because of the games.

I landed out about 40 km from home at 1850 needing 1 more climb to get me home, unfortunately nothing was working anymore. But my distance was good enough for 999 points on the day.

I was able to stay ahead of the gaggle most of the day and flew a lot with the 18 m gaggle where our tasks crossed. The 15 m gaggle was a furball, while the 18 m guys were much more repectful. Today I have lodged a complaint against one of the Italian pilots who insists on trying to climb up the middle of a 30 plane gaggle and continually turns inside everyone cutting them off in the thermal.

Day 3

Today was another challenging day, with 20 - 25 kt winds, but the lift was strong and there was much less spread-out of the clouds.

I was one of the first to launch at 1115 and after tow immediately climbed in 3 kts to 3500 ft and then headed upwind to the startpoint with 3 other gliders and found nothing to climb in. Eventually I decided to take are-light instead of struggling at 1000 ft like some of the other guys.

After the relight, conditions were better, but still just as windy. By the time I climbed to cloudbase I was 19 km downwind of the startpoint!

Fortunately when I arrived at the startpoint most of the 15m class was still milling around waiting to start. I had some trouble getting a good start since as soon as you circled, you were blown away from the start zone. I was finally able to start about 10 minutes after the pack and had only a couple of companions on the first and second leg. On the third leg, I met up with a bunch of 18 m guys as was able to move along quickly. On the fourth leg, I flew with some open class gliders.

In the rush to take off in the morning, I copied the task from the previous day in my computer and forgot to change the last turnpoint zone from 1 km to 0.5 km, so I missed the final zone by 150 m, thus the 50 pt penalty for the day, damn stupid mistake!

Day 2

Well day two didn't go so well for me. The weather was much like day 1 with lots of clouds spreading out and creating large holes, but to complicate things just a little more, we had 25-30 kt winds from ground up to cloud base.

After searching under a cloud for a thermal with another glider and not finding anything worthwhile, I headed for the next few clouds I looked back to see him turn into something, but kept going. As it turns out I couldn't find anything under the next clouds and he made it home.

Once you dropped below 2000 ft it was almost impossible to climb away in the thermals that were being broken by the wind.

The day could have been worse - for example two pilots on the German team landed out 4 km from the start line and to make things worse, one of them hit a deer when he landed and damaged his glider. It has now been taken back to Schleicher for repair and at a team Captain's meeting it was agreed to let him fly a different glider for the remainder of the contest.

Day 1 -part 2

It seems that for the preliminary scoring, the centre to centre distance for the turn areas was being used to calculate a speed over your task time and this was ginving some preliminary scores in the 120 km/hr range. This morning the score sheet shows the winner at 109 km/hr, so I feel better about my 96 km/hr. This also moves me up 100 points from the preliminary scores.

This morning it was raining at breakfast, but Dr Jack is showing some posibility of 4 kt lift this afternoon, so we will head to the airport at 9 am and start to rig just in case.

Day 1

Well to say that today was a tough day is a bit of an understatement! Fortunately, the 15 m class had the easiest time compared tothe other classes. We had an area task while the 18 m and Open had assigned tasks, forcing them to reach 0.5 km cylinders.

The weather was forecast to be flyable, but there would be significant spread out and cycling as the clouds shaded the ground. This caused many 18 m pilots to land out near their first turnpoint.

We had a good cloudstreet running to our first turn, then lots of shade an no cu for the second leg. I elected to back track down the first leg ( a big deviation) and then try to hit the second turn from the north.

As I entered the second turn area I met up with a gaggle of gliders that I had been with atth first turn, so things looked OK. By the time I entered the third turn area, I had about 40 minutes left to cover 75 km, so I turned short in the third cylinder and made it home 4 minutes over time.

I am really curious to see where the fast (120 km/hr) pilots went to make up the extra distance!

Opening Ceremony

Today we had the mandatory pilot's meeting at 11 am where all the teams were introduced. There are 130 pilots from 34 different countries. 36 in Open Class, 50 in 18 m class and 44 in 15 m class.

This afternoon we all go to nearby Belzig for the opening cermony where the teams will be paraded across a stage and introduced. On the stage will be a number of former World Champions who have all been invited for the ceremony.

Today, Philip Neuman from South Carolina dropped by after the meeting to say hi to Virginia and me. Philip flew in the Sports Class at Waynesville (Region 6) a month ago with us. He is in Germany on a school exchange program and has a couple of open days before he has to go home so decided to camp out at the contest.

Practice day 2

We had another great soaring day, with the best conditions and fastest speeds of the contest so far.  The open class winner was 144 km/hr the 18 m at 140 km/hr and the 15 m was 138 km/hr.

 

I posted a speed of 128 km/hr, so I am happy with that.

 

The course for the day took us under the 6500 ft outer ring of the Berlin Terminal area to the first turnpoint, then across the same wetlands on the second leg as yesterday, and finally along the high sandy pine forests for the way home.  For the practice days the task setter is trying to show us all of the areas, good and bad.

 

The wetland area has lots of little lakes and streams and for the past couple of days has required about a 30 km glide to get across it.  Fortunately we were able to climb enough before crossing that the arrival on the far side was at 3500 ft, straight into a 6 kt thermal under some good looking cu.

 

The third leg, following the sandy pine forests was the best leg with cloud base at 8000 AGL and little need to circle for about 95 km along the cloud street.  At the Elbe River, the cloud street suddenly ended and I had to deviate across the river to another cloud street where I was able to pick up 5 kts for a 2800 ft climb to get on final glide and then zip home at about 100 kts.
 

Dave