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.

Preliminary Entry List

The preliminary entries for the contest have been submitted to the contest organizers in Germany and for now the contest is oversubscribed. There are 163 preliminary entries listed on the Contest Website from 34 countries!

click picture to enlarge

The organizers want to limit entries to 130 total! This means that we need to get our entry fee of 950 Euros per pilot to the organizers before the 31 March deadline. Missing this deadline will be the first cut-off to reduce the number of pilots. If there are still too many pilots after entry fees are submitted, the entries will be ranked by the Country's standing on the IGC Ranking list.

At the moment Canada is ranked 28 out of 37, but it looks like we can move up to 25th once some of the 2007 contests are counted. This would place us above Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Ebay as a fund-raising tool

Over the last few weeks I have raised about $150 selling some old stuff on Ebay. As part of a major house clean-up campaign Virginia and I have been going through old boxes in the basement and finding "other peoples treasures".

Of course not everthing sold on Ebay, but enough did to make it worthwhile. The question now is if we can find more pearls to list for sale.

Satellite Picture of Luesse

Here is a satellite shot of the gliderport at Luesse - it is a huge grass field. In the satellite shot you can see the gliders on the runway, as well as the hangars, clubhouse and campground.

For the real google satellite page click here this will allow you to zoom in and move around the area.

Landhotel Dahnsdorf

Thanks to Maria and Jerzy's research, the team has made reservations at the Landhotel Dahnsdorf located about 10 km from the airport in Luesse.

The hotel has high-speed wireless internet, so we will be able to provide reports from the contest at the end of each day.

The cost is also reasonable at 63 Euro per night including breakfast.

Things are coming together, but we still need to sort out car rentals and this is always difficult considering we need trailer hitches in case of land-out.

A Glider is Found

After sending a few emails to glider pilots in Germany I have been able to secure a glider for the contest. I have an ASW-27 booked. This is actually a club-owned glider and it was arranged through Ulli Kremer at the Schleicher factory. From what I understand the club is associated with the factory and is in the Wasserkuppe area near Frankfurt.

This glider was flown by John Coutts in the Worlds in Sweden last year and posted the fastest speed of the contest in the 15 M class. The factory re-profiled the wings last year so it is ready to go.

The rental cost on the glider is 125 Euro per day, and this is a good price!

The glider is equipped with an LX7000 flight computer, so I will be familiar with the instruments - I think I will bring an altimeter in feet though because flying in meters is just too wierd.