US Standard Class Nationals

I'm back from competing in the US Standard Class Nationals in Cordele, Georgia. We managed to fly 6 out of the 10 days, but the weather was pretty marginal.

Two of the six days had mass land-outs and I was able to get home both of those days. One day everyone landed out as high cloud and strong winds came in and completely shut down the lift.

All in all it was challenging weather to fly, but I did OK. I placed 5 out of 28 at 96.3% of the winner's score. I beat one of the US Team members going to the Worlds in Reiti this summer and was only 29 points behind the other US team member.

Complete Scores and details are available on the SSA website at:
http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/ContestResultsDetail.asp?id=289

The News is in

Willem and Joerg talked to the DG factory yesterday and they have confirmed that Willem's LS10 will be ready in time for the contest. This means that as a result of the cut in Team Canada from 3 to 2 pilots by the organizers that Willem and Jerzy will be competing in Luesse.

If there are any cancellations between now and the contest there is still a chance that I can compete. So I will keep things on hold for a while!

A retrieve vehicle is found

Since there is some uncertainty as to whether or not Willem will be able to secure a glider for the contest, I am continuing preparations despite the cut to the Canadian team.

The last item I needed to put in place was a retrieve vehicle during the contest. During the SOSA work weekend we had a couple of visitors from Germany who arrived at SOSA and rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. One of them had visited SOSA in 2006 and spent an afternoon at the club while touring through Canada. He has now moved to Canada and is in the process of job-hunting. (Fomerly an IT guy in the banking sector).

While talking about the contest I mentioned that the last thing I needed was a car and he very generously offered the use if his car in Germany that he has not yet de-registered! What a stroke of luck!

So for now we sit back and wait to see what happens with Willem's glider. We will know by May 15th whether or not Willem's glider will be ready or not for the contest.

When the time comes, at least I knowI have everything ready to go.

Disappointing News

As we reported earlier, the contest is over-subscribed, so the organizers started to scale back entries and the Canadian Team has been affected by the cut. We are now allowed to enter only two pilots in the contest. Since Willem is #1 on the Canadian list and Jerzy #2, I am now on standby.

This in stark contrast to Germany who has 8 pilots, and England with 7. In total 6 pilots were cut from the contest in the name of safety. In the big picture, I fail to see how 6 pilots out of 140 total pilots will make a material difference to safety!

All of the cuts were made to overseas teams, those who have likely started planning the soonest and invested the most effort in putting together their entry.

In the case of Team Canada, Gliders are rented, airfares paid for, hotels reserved - money paid out.

The cuts were made based on the IGC's new ranking list. A Eurocentric list if one has ever been made! The list is heavily biased towards European competitions and the large European countries and awards more points to European competitors then overseas competitors. How are small countries like Canada, Israel, Chile, Argentina and Lithuania (all the countries that have been cut) expected to compete?

Going forward, the process needs to change, Countries need to be guaranteed a minimum number of pilots to remove the inequity of Germany's 8 pilots to Canada's 2 pilots. The IGC ranking list needs to be reviewed for fairness for all countries and the European bias removed.

This can only be done at the IGC meetings and it will be an uphill battle since the entire IGC is Eurocentric.

WestJet provides two passes for the Team

Thanks to SAC member John Mulder who flies for WestJet, we have two passes from WestJet for any flight within Canada.

We neeed to determine how best to use this passes to the benefit of the team, but may be able to auction them amongst SAC members.

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.