A few shots from the Schleicher factory

Germany

It was such a great feeling to cross the border into Germany and finally be on better roads! 7 hours after we left Leszno we arrived at the Schleicher factory and unhitched the glider out the front. Then to find the B&B that dad had booked for us.  It was already 20:00 and we were both hungry and tired. I had a very slow data connection so I was just able to look up the place on google and bring up the map! Up a windy, narrow track past the Schleicher factory appearing to lead off into the country side.. "Err we are going the right way aren't we!?" There was a little group of houses and a big barn up a head and we stopped and waited there for the map to load. There was a little sign next to the farm house looking building and it was the name we were looking for, but that can't be it because that place is too small. It's just a little house. A little old lady came up the drive of the barn building saying that we are in the right place without even a word from us. Obviously we're were the only lost looking people around. She showed us to our rooms in the barn and then we set off on an adventure to find food! Now driving through the village at 21:00, hunting for grub. I spotted the knife and fork Symbol and it was open!!! German beer and a schnitzel! 

Now we have just left the factory after our tour. Amazing! Off too Frankfurt to ship Andrew back to AUS. 

Day.... Pack up and go

So here we are, the Junior World Gliding Championships is over and another two years till the next. The closing ceremony is happening in a few hours and now I have to try an make sense out of all my stuff and try to bring some sort of order to it all. I've been living in a tent for the past month.... 

And what a fantastic month it has been. I came here to learn and by golly did I! Now over the next two years I'll build on this foundation and throw it all out there in Narromine, NSW for the next JWGC! 

To everyone who helped me get here, thank you so much for your support, your generosity made it all possible. My home club at Balaklava had a big fundraiser the weekend before I began my journey. It was such a great night and to everyone who came along and chipped in and helped me out from the start, thank you. It was so great to see in action the tight knit community we have there. My gliding Career has been raised there and from there it will only continue to progress. Though that does mean that I will continue to steal the Mini Nimbus for long flights ;-)

There is a person also from Balaklava GC who has helped me out enormously for this trip. He washed and de-bugged my wings, ballasted, taped and polished the glider, didn't drop the wing too many times as he ran the wing while I launched. And most of all he came all this way to do all of those things. And before the comp we even managed to get off the ground together in an Arcus T!!! 

A very big thank you to Andrew Horton. 

And also my crew who couldn't make it over here, Dad was there every morning with another email of advise, stats, weather updates and predictions. More stats from Colin, top daily tips from Jess (even after she left from her week here) mum in the background of Skype calls from dad and though polishing wings being her speciality she couldn't be here, my girlfriend Rachel was only a Skype call away as I'd get myself ready on the grid for the flight ahead. 

So what happened yesterday? There was a small window of opportunity to get another day in with the weather system that had been through. It made for multiple task changes, finally settling on a racing task of 245km and of course all this on the grid, not very long before launch. To start with, climbs were very weak and very tricky to climb to cloud base. Launching last didn't exactly help this but accounts from people launching earlier said that once at cloud base they would leave and not get a climb till at all till very low. Things did start to pick up though and I started with a big gaggle and powered on down a massive cloud street on the first leg. Matt and I were wing tip to wing tip most of the way and holding height too. Around the first turn and we were now on a cross wind leg. Huge gaps between streets! And now it started to get tricky. Weakening climbs and slow glides. Around the second turn and searching for a climb over very marginal terrain with little options. Most of the others deviated at a very sharp angle to get back to big cloud. I went the opposite way at a shallow angle toward smaller, fresh looking clouds but that came to a dead end and I was punished by not sticking to the group and then made an even sharper deviation to the big clouds and more landing options. Even slower glides now and taking any climb that was enough to turn in. Inching along the final tailwind leg home. I saw a few gliders turning and made my way to join them. We left together a flew to join under another two gliders. This climb was now the strongest I'd had for a long while and took us almost to cloud base and at a marginal glide from 50km out. The day was well and truly dead and only bubbles of buoyant air over the pine forests brought us home. That glide was thrilling! And pushing low chasing a D2 to cross the 3km finish ring 50m off the deck for a straight in on runway 24. 

The final party was last night but I kept it pretty tame and stayed away from the polish vodka. We have a big drive today to get the glider back to Wasserkuppe. They had 'official' 'Epic Achievement Awards' presented around mid night, very similar to Paper Plate awards at Joey Glide. I was awarded 'Longest Fight Lost.' For my struggle below a certain altitude for over 30min before outlanding. All of the awards were 'Epic' stats from the two weeks of competition. And how those stats were gathered, that would have been an arduous task. One of the really funny ones. 'Shallow penetration' touched the sector by 1 meter. 

Lowest starter, highest finisher, furthest person from the airfield, furthest outlanding, most outlandings (wasn't me!!!) and so on. It was a good night 

Right now we are getting to the tail end of the closing ceremony. It's even worse than the opening. Doubling up of thank you speeches in English and Polish.... Double the length. Then two class to give prizes to individually up from 10th.. And they play 'We are the Champions' by Queen for each.. And to top it off, of course it looks like the best flying day that we never had. 

Long drive ahead, pretty easy on the Autobahn with a Cobra trailer!! 

 

10 August, from the crew dude, part 4 (updated)

OK, Eric did one thing and didn't do the other.

He got back.  And he didn't outland.

The day turned out well although the last leg turned out a bit soft.  I think outlanding was on no one's mind as all the paddocks would've been well wet.  (Speaking of which, I think we might be in for more rain tonight.  Some interesting-looking clouds are rolling in.  Forecast for tomorrow is chance of rain.)

The results have all come in (possibly apart from one or two who outlanded) and Eric came 20th out of 36 or so.Nicely done!

Oh, yes, Eric got back, and the first thing we did after that was to de-rig the glider.  The SPOT tracker wasn't working too well so it was difficult to know where he was at times but at one point two consecutive 10-minute SPOT points were separated by very little distance, so obviously he was struggling.  But then he must've found the last good climb for the day and steamed on back home. 

Meantime the campsite's been chaotic with people packing up heaps of stuff (we Aussies have had to make do with a tent, but nearly all of the Europeans were able to come with caravans and annexes and a heap more gear than we could).

The end-of-comp party is tonight but I'm not sure how much we'll partake of it as we have to get up early tomorrow morning to complete the pack-job and then hit the road to Poppenhausen the moment the closing ceremony's done.  We drop the glider off there and stay nearby for the night, then the next day we drive to Frankfurt so I can get the plane back to Oz and Eric then proceeds on elsewhere.

So I think this will be my last post (how does that bugle thingie go??)  in which case I'll sign off completely.  Guess I'll leave it to Eric to judge how I went as crew for this, his first international competition.

Cheers

10 August, from the crew dude, part 3

Something at last!!!  They're finally away, Standard launching starting at 1343 after several delays - Club launched a bit earlier - and reduction of task from "A" to "D" - 240 km or so - and the sky's cleared up with the cirrus now gone, and Cu's everywhere.  Everyone should get around - although we had one or two relights - and back in good time to de-rig and then start the mammoth job of packing up and sorting out good stuff from rubbish which'll go into the now-overflowing bins.

Maybe Eric'll be back around 1600 or 1630 or something.

And nobody wants to retrieve today. :-)

Cheers

10 August, from the crew dude, part 2

OK, so miracles do happen.  Tasks have been set.  For Standard, "A" of 350k or so and "B" of 290 or so, and there are definite breaks in the Cu's.  First launch 1230 (upped from 1200)..  We'll have to see if the tasks get further modified.

Some sort of cold front appears to have gone through, leaving us with a nice unstable stream which should produce lots of nice thermals.  Some cirrus around but that may go.

Stay tuned!

Cheers

10 August, from the crew dude

Knowledge is a wonderful thing.

I wish someone would give me some, then I might be able to work out these weather systems here a bit better.  The rain that was supposed to continue throughout the night stopped around midnight.  Maybe the weather forecasters need some knowledge too, or I'm looking at the wrong website.

Still left us with a mass of low stuff though.  But only time will tell whether it gets trashed enough to let some sun through...

Last day today.  I get the impression everyone really wants to fly.  And equally, not outland as all the fields will be really boggy!

Cheers