--Hessu
--ekru ylla@ami.fi
Scandinavia in the summertime is something special. I've spent many long evenings in the Press Office trying to have the bulletin ready for the next morning. Riding my bike back to our Jury hut in the twilight, is always tranquil through the forest.
At midnight the night seems the darkest and about one in the morning the sun is already thinking about coming up again. One beautiful night, at about one o'clock the full moon was up and the sun, some 80ø further round the horizon, was also about to come up. A memorable impression from Finland.
There will be some other memorable impressions to take home from Finland. Remembering how pilots started so late, they couldn't fly home. It seems to me to be making some kind of mockery of this sport I hold so dearly. I think the next meeting of the IGC's Competition Philosophy Group will be an interesting one. Particularly taking into account accurate information which can be deciphered now from GNSS flight recordings. I hope we can all learn from this and offer any ideas we may think of to improve this type of flying.
Tuesday morning the tasksetters Wille and Pentti decided to close the start gate quicker than earlier to get the pilots leave. The metman told that the thermals will die early. He also wrote into the weather sheet that wind speeds will increase towards the evening. He especially underlined that the last lifts will be very weak. It is better not to test it.
Still the majority of the pilots had their usual holding patterns in the vicinity of the start gates. The big gaggle in every class left in the last moment. They were much lower than an hour earlier, the wind was stronger and the lifts weaker. I am running out of words...
If it was possible to travel to the future, task setters would really like to visit late afternoon and evening during early morning hours (preferably with Duo Discus). In real life we just imagine and listen carefully to our metmen. Then we try to make as good a guess as we can and push pins into the map. Luckily our met info comes from an experienced glider pilot, so we can trust his word and prepare tasks in the best areas possible. Also, his college from the Finland Meteorological Institute is a great support to task setters.
The second challenge for the day is the airspace. Our competition area is usually broad but flat on the map. We are pushed far from Helsinki and we can fly inside Tampere military area but TMA is quite limited. Areas east from Tampere TMA are not very nice for outlandings, so with weak thermals (if we know) we don't want to send gliders there. Sea breeze also enters areas from west and south quite often.
With good cumulus weather the only problem we have is altitude limit. That is sometimes a struggle with air traffic control. While Finland has not very dense air traffic, we have large controlled airspace and it is not easy to get it for gliders. There are always controllers who don't want extra work and let the competition fly more free. There are always pilots in heavy aircraft, who shout for optimum climb, route and descent. It takes time to change this attitude, so wemay have more airspace for just few hours a day.
We also try hard to avoid gaggles. It is not so easy. We have many suggestions how to avoid them and every usable suggestion is welcome. I think, that the worst (weak dry thermals) is behind us. For future we will need suitable software for scoring and evaluation people to make their work easier, then we could have cats cradle every day and the audience could still have results early enough.
Our ultimate aim is to get every glider back home, however we must give tasks long enough to get real champions out of the competition. We have been lucky so far, with nine competition days out of ten. Despite one day we have had relatively few outlandings. It is historical in Finland as only once has there has been such a successful competition.
Best luck to every pilot!
"What are the scores" Crew replied,
"We don't have all the finish times yet." Pilot,
"I mean the football scores!"
If you are more vacation and gastronomy minded you may take part to the easy going handicapped competitions, open to everybody, respectively the
No more danger to be heavily fined for the one axle trailere. The road police was at last informed that we are in the European Community and that thay must accept the Community rules. We cordially invite you an expect to see many of you down there!
07.00 AM
Ring, ring, ring..... Oh no, it can't be 7 already! I feel like I only went to bed a minute ago. Well rise'n'shine anyway and I drag myself out of my warm, soft bed.
07.30 AM
I feel a bit more awake after a warm shower and a quick breakfast. I go by bike to the office.
08.00 AM
The first two hours of the day aren't exactly my favourite time, I hate copy machines so I also hate copying and now I have to take thousands of copies! Oh bother...
10.00 AM
It's my turn to go to briefing, so I head to the hangar. Because I'm STILL a bit sleepy, I realise after a while that I've already forgotten everything that has been said. I hope it wasn't anything interesting, probably Tapio just continued his speech against gaggle flying, as has been the issue of the week. As I get back to the office the others are there already. How can they always look so alert in the morning???
11.40 AM
It must look very funny to see us carrying the clock,the papers and everything else on the grid, I feel like a camel in Sahara (especially on a hot day...)! Maybe I really should believe my friends and hire a cute guy to carry my stuff around (or grow up and get a drivers licence, it would really help during the cold and dark winters of Finland...)
1.00 PM
This is the most boring time of the day, there's nothing to do and nothing exciting is happening so we just hang around the office...
6.00 PM
Finally they're coming back and we have something to do again. When the pilots come to return the GNSS(SSSSSSS.....) loggers we hear the good and bad stories of the day, depending how they went.
9.00 PM
I leave the office and take a shower, after that I go to Lift & Sink and another evening is starting. Tonight I will go to sleep early but it doesn't make any difference I'll still be sleepy in the morning. I always am.
--ekru ylla@ami.fi
Well I'm sitting at my desk a little distracted, because the Nokia Throwing Contest is proceeding outside my window. It's a very cold evening but all the teams are here competing in good spirit. Everyone seems to be happy today, after the Cat's Cradle Task. No gliders crossed the finish line at Räyskälä but all flew a task in the only area with weather suitable for flying today and landed out away from home safely. One glider even landed on a golf course in a local city. I heard only praising comments for Tapio and his team choosing such a task today and must also congratulate him for being brave enough to include this type of task in the rules. I hope we will see more of this sensible option in the future.
We will have to see now what the weather will bring to our area in the next two days.
After the period of many blue days a rest day was welcome. The Finnish summer weather showed a new face on Thursday. The morning was almost clear but the metmen told us that the rain from the west will destroy the thermals quite early. The risk of rain showers existed everywhere. Tasksetters had very few chances. A fixed task would be plain lottery to find non-raining turn points. The only, but radical choice was the cat's cradle for all classes.
Our tireless scorers had made a handy, little software to measure the distances quickly. A three hour distance task received a positive response among the pilots. By the time of launch the sky looked reasonably good but the rain area was hiding only about 20 kilometres West of Räyskälä. In the middle of the launching a big cloud covered the release area. To avoid rush in the area, the towing was stopped for ten minutes between 15 metre and open classes. It was enough to to get sufficient separation between the classes. In spite of the 10 minute pause all the gliders were in the air in one hour. Good show for the towing team again. One hour after the opening of the last start gate there was no gliding weather over Räyskälä. The rainy area crawled slowly to the East. Luckily the spread out did not spoil the thermals in the prescribed area. Pilots flew happily for three hours without gaggles and did not land too far away. An uncertain day became a full contest day.
Old McTapio had a swarm, E-I-E-I-O
And in that swarm he has some gliders, E-I-E-I-O
With a gaggle-gaggle here
And a gaggle-gaggle there
Here a gaggle
There a gaggle
Every where a gaggle-gaggle
Old McTapio had a swarm, E-I-E-I-O
Constructed 1989. Total flying hours 1210, launches 331. 2nd place 95 UK Std Nationals. Holds UK 100km triangle record. Tinted canopy and tail ballast tank with battery box. 27,000 Pounds stg Contact Phil Jeffery, pilot of 64.
Uncle Bob (or was that Sir Bob) will be waiting to quench your thirst with traditional warm beer!!! Bring your team.
It did not seem possible, but day 9 was worse than day 8. Seen from the landing area, among the crews awaiting for their pilots, we enjoyed (?) quite a show when a first compact group of gliders came in to finish and other ones were appearing for just brief moments above the trees to turn to the left, disappear and land in what became suddenly the second Räyskälä aiport for eight of them, 0,4km short of the finish line. Some of them had their final glide spoiled by a sudden surge of headwind but many others, (altogether almost 50) had to outland, due to the windy and meteorologically miserable day.
What was even worse than the previuos blue days, was that gaggle flying was exasperated, due to the fact that nobody wanted to start first, that the starts accumulated in the last permitted minute and that the results reflected almost exactly the inverse order of the departures. This result was obtained at the expense of an amount of risk, that should not reasonably be accepted.
The applause that followed the annoucement of Tapio, that instead of giving daily prizes, he would reward the pilots that started first in each class, is indicative enough of how much this kind of flying and competitions is not exactly what all of us would like to experience and see.
What is the real sport value of a race when a man of the experience of Goran Ax, twice world champion, is rewarded with 172 points for having departed about half an hour before the best tacticians that crossed the start at the last moment? The four best of the standard class left six minutes before the closure of the starts, having caught up the ones that left from a quarter to half an hour sooner. Only one of the first ten of the 15 metre crossed the start line four minutes before the closure, while 15 of the first seventeen crossed within one minute. The situation was about the same for the open class.
About the risks of gaggle flying, Leonardo Brigliadori told us after landing, how he, in reduced visibility against the sun, barely avoided with a sudden dive the belly of another glider. He also pointed out how here the conditions are must worse than those experienced in Australia in the blue days. The thermals were much higher there, allowing for thousands of metres of working height, here it is limited to a few hundred.
We would incidentally like to remark on his competitive longevity: he flew his first World Championships in 1960 in Germany! He is in favour of a horse race starts, where the tendency of the gaggle is to disrupt, since, to be able to win,the best pilots must try to get out of the gaggle. With the experienced in the last days the contrary is true: the good pilot is satisfied when he joins the head of the gaggle and has only to fly conservatively within it to win the day.
I still hope that all this will provoke some fruitful thinking to change rules and save our sport, that, according to some of the most renowned pilots present here, is beeing killed by all this tacticism.
All reliable stories start with research and since I know the names of the seven dwarfs only in Hungarian, I went to the British Team for help. Interviewing nine of them, they could only come up with six names, the seventh, which happens to be me, we still don't know. One of their lady members promised to call home and ask her children, so here we go with six for the time being about
Next day they proceeded via Berlin to the Polish Border where the Polish Custom Officers made them wait over three hours looking at the perfectly legal documents of the gliders. It was about three in the morning when they got to Szczecin (Stettin) and found a sleepy Hotel near the wharves. The temperature inside was about 15C, considerably warmer than the outside temp of 5C with wind- chill factor making it about 0C.
Breakfast in the room from what mamma packed for the road, bacon, sausage, onion gave them the strength for carrying on, trying to find the offices of the shipping line. After about two hours of mixed English-Polish-Russian, spiced with some Hungarian expressions that would make this paper blush, they discovered it next door. The rest was easy, a Polish guide took them to the ship, they loaded the cars and trailers, stuffed their heads with plenty of tasty warm food and retired happily to their cabins.... and this was the time they discovered they had NO Snow White! Now what would six healthy, young, virile dwarfs want to do with Snow White? At this point you are right!
That is exactly what they were fantasising about, however, it will soon change for something much more prosaic. But... we are not there yet.
They sleep well while their ship chugged out of Szczecin (try to pronounce it) and next morning they found themselves on the open sea. The sky was blue, the clouds were white and the dwarfs were green on the rolling ship. (How do they take thermal activities?) Anyway, they became accustomed to this and settled down, spending the day uneventfully. Next day, Sleepy, who is the cameraman was filming the beautiful turren on the table, full of delicious soup, when a fellow passenger, who was greener than the rest, ran outside to give him a chance to video yesterday's soup. Happy then asked permission to steer the ship, with the result of making even the captain seasick.
I am sorry, but now I have to leave with the trailer to pick Dopey up, who has just outlanded, so if you want to find out what happened next, you will have to wait for the next edition of Groundloop. (Grumpy and Bashful are also out there in the wild Finnish woods)
Note: Our sources tell us that the seventh dwarf is Doc......JO
"Has Tapio spoken to you yet?"
Bob, "NO, should he?"
Tony, "Yes, I think he will."
Bob, "Why?"
Tony, "Your pilots have started too late (the same as my pilots)
and they may get zero points."
Bob, "But that's not in the rules."
Tony, "Yes it is."
Bob (despondently), "Ooh!"
Some time later, Bob having spoken to Tapio wandered round the
airfield and found a long piece of rope, which he tied into a
hangman's noose and placed round his neck. He found Tony.
"Tony, would you please be so kind and pull this rope for me?"
Tony, "On one condition."
Bob, "Of course, anything my good friend."
Tony, "May I please borrow your rope when you're finished!"
Martti felt the task was the only solution given the weather situation. The good weather moved rapidly to the east during the day, however in the east, it would have been possible to fly until about 7PM.
Wille Halonen, the deputy manager, tries to find tuesdays homecoming gliders. See his tight smile.
Czechs and Italians team captains in pasta and beer evening. Guess witch served pasta? Anyway, they were both delicious. A big Thank You for both teams!
On tuesday was so heavy wind that at the field of the nearest village landed nine gliders. From that field to airfiled is about 300 m. See the forrest behind field, behind thet is Räyskälä airfield.
European Gliding Championships 1996 on guenther-eichhorn.com
Dr. Günther Eichhorn Travel Website
Soaring website