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It is amazing how difficult the timing of a major gliding contest is. The first big contest at Räyskälä, the Worlds in 1976 was preceded by excellent weather for one month. But what happened, when the real contest began: an endless string of low pressures attacked Finland from the North Atlantic. Sky cleared almost every evening, but the morning brought another rain over Räyskälä.
Europeans in 1988 was much better. Still the best weather was during the practice week. A new and even bigger competition than the previous two is starting now about one week earlier. At the moment the weather does not look very promising, but I want to be an optimist and believe that the chilly and cloudy practice week brings us warm temperatures and high cloudbases for the official contest days.
The practice week is at least as important to the organization than to pilots. All the carefully planned functions need testing in real life, too. New technology makes many things smoother and easier, but not without practice. During the remaining two practice days we must fly and work exactly as next week.
Tapio
The following appeared in Groundloop issue #2, from Tapio. Note the start. Do you hear the Blues?
I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning, when heavy rain drummed the roof of my caravan. I thought this is a nightmare. It can not happen to me. The first contest day was carefully planned to be a good flying day. Rainy day at the beginning is always a hit to the spirit of the competition. I jumped up at half past six and looked carefully out: no rain, but gray overcast. During the short walk to shower (I mean washing myself --not rain shower) my sprits were not high. I tried to think what to say in the briefing, if the forecast is as lousy as the existing weather.
The shower woke me up and even the sky seemed to be lighter. The morning meeting at Lift&Sink started with some hope, when the always positive metman Tapio Tourula walked in and told that there is a 50 per cent chance for a flying day. A new rain shower did not support his mild optimism. Before the briefing the sky began to clear and the metmen's optimism increased to 65 per cent.
Our skillful tasksetting team Wille and Pentti Lehto, a retired airline pilot and an experienced glider pilot had extensive brain storming with the metman and ended up to tasks, which turned out to be very good for the day. However, at noon, when the launches were supposed to begin the growing optimism was on test. The sniffer, Mikko Asikainen reported continously low cloudbases and poor lift. The cirrus clouds in South-West was an unknown factor. Finally the relief was enormous, when the 10 tow planes started their engines at 13.10 and the first launch began exactly at 13.15. After that the pressure was on pilots. My only job was to wait.
The British pilot Mike Young passed the finish as the first competitor of the 8th European Gliding Championships. One hour later we had more than sixty finishers. It was time to have a toast for our invaluable sponsors, who made this event possible.
Next briefing on Monday at 10 o'clock.
Tapsa
This appeared in Groundloop issue #2, from Teresa Toivonen, Swedish Team Manager. This is a good one.
The check-in procedure for a gliding competition can be a nerve-wracking business; it's like passing a customs filter or arrival port at some airports, selecting green line and knowing you've got nothing to worry you still feel guilty somehow.. it's the same feeling I experience everytime I check into competition. Is it really sure that my insurance is OK, the technical papers will be recognized by the officials, etc, etc...
And so it happened, what must happen; standing beside our pilots as they checked in the turn had come to our cool nerves of steel Swedish Military pilot Jan Ola Nordh, flying the standard class glider KR. He successfully presented one paper after another to officials until the point was reached for his glider licence...
He picked up his licence and suddenly started studying carefully his validity document. No other outside reaction was noticed exept the colour on his face slowly shifted from "after-a-long-dark-winter-without-sun-white" to a red colour as if he had just come out of sauna. A quick glance to his validity document releaved an expiration date of 25/11/95. Little was said, except to say that he would return to the registration office later with his documents.
What happend after this is a long and complicated story but I can only say thank God for modern fax machines, to good friends within the CAA and Medical business who can be reached with mobile telephones in the middle of their fishing holidays. Some 72 hours later, Jan-Ola could present his fresh glider pilot licence, valid until year 2001.
This is actually a fresh story for Day 2, Monday. Groundloop will have this on issue three.
The weather situation in Europe has been quite complicated since last Friday. The long cloudy area spreads from Spain to Scandinavia. The edge is sweeping Southern Finland almost daily. The Metman Tapio Tourula has been as accurate as possible in his forecasts. We have flown two excellent days immediately at the beginning of the 8th European Gliding Championships.
The first contest dawned gray and wet, but the miracle showed up and as the Metman told the weather improved after briefing. The short tasks were difficult enough because of low cloud bases and occasionally weak lift. The open class winner Janusz Centka still speeded around in a phenomenal speed of 105 km/h. In standard class the strong German Team of four pilots continued from where they stopped at Rieti two years ago. The group took the first four places of the day with the speed of 93 km/h. The quickest was Erwin Ziegler with a narrow marginal to his team mates.
The 15-meter class was dominated by the young German Michael Grund, who was a bit faster than Alister Kay from Great Britain.
The Monday morning was once again gray. The edge of the big cloud area pulsed over the south coast of Finland. Before the briefing it clearly disappeared to the south, but soon after it crawled North again. The tasksetters Wille Halonen and Pentti Lehto designed tasks 300-360 km, but were fully ready to shorten them, if the cloud layer would come nearer the task area. However, cus started early and the launches began at planned time at noon. The eleven powerful tow planes tugged the 88 gliders into air in 56 minutes, which is excellent performance on the second day of the contest.
It was amazing how well the pilots believed the forecast, which told that the high clouds may kill the thermals at late afternoon. The separation between the first and last start time was only 20 minutes in all classes. It could be seen on the finish line too :-) Early starts paid off. The first finishers were home before 4 p.m. As a competition director it was easy to smile, when all pilots were back about an hour later, when the gliding weather was practically dead. Good start for the first week of the competition.
Tapio Savolainen
P.S. Janet Janowitsch is making an excellent Daily Bulletin for us. However, she is doing it with the Pagemaker software and we have no time to tag the files to .html. We work hard to send at least a part of the stories of the Groundloop to web-pages, too. Be patient, the number one priority is to run the contest smoothly. Sooner or later you will find more information of the EGC96.
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8th European Gliding Championships '96 - underground Loop on guenther-eichhorn.com
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