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The World Club Class Gliding Championships GAWLER, Australia |
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Day 1 Day
2 Day 3 Day 4 Day
5
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On Saturday the green team boarded Qantas Airlines for Gawler Australia via Perth. We left South Africa at 6pm and arrived at Gawler at 6pm local time. As it only gets dark here at 9pm we had time to rig the one Cirrus – the other one had already been rigged. Once all at the airfield had been done, we headed off to find our accommodation at the Hillier trailer park. Thank heavens I listened to Steve and ordered air conditioning. We were glad to find two air-conditioned cabins waiting for us, each with bathroom, kitchen and beds and only 2km away from the airfield – very nice but a bit compact!
Today we started getting all the paperwork and odds and ends done. These Aussies love paperwork!. Getting the privately owned Cirrus was easy and took about 30min. Getting the club owned Cirrus sorted out took half the day!
Uys and Attie spent the whole day stripping the instruments out of the two gliders and replacing them with instruments that they brought with. By 18:00pm both gliders were ready, however the radio in the club owned Cirrus is still not working so we will have to sort that out tomorrow.
The temperature is 37 deg C at the moment and it feels like an oven. I had to drive to another town to get Pay as you go cell phone kits as the place in Gawler only had one left. Briefing lasted over an hour and the organization has run out of maps for our pilot’s – We also have received no rules of the competition as yet and had to go to the office and borrow their set, which we have to give back.
Our two pilots are on task at the moment. The task is a post task with one mandatory turn point and a minimum distance of 160km and a min time of 2.5 hours.
The pilots came back at about 5:30 with speeds of 92.23 kmh and 89.54 kmh. This on the scoreboard had them at 14 and 16th place. The winner was at 122kph. With the make it up as we go scoring system I do not know if the handicap system was applied, but I will find out in the morning. They got to 10,000 ft agl with 3-4 mt thermals and very little sink. After analysing the flight of Uys he climbed 5580 mt in thermals and 5550 mt in straight flight. I have never seen that before. They were also very amazed at flying in such good conditions within very clear view of the ocean. They also made the mistake of using remote start points as turn points, and that cost them time, distance and points. I was also issued with a new set of turn points after the flight as they discovered numerous faults in the one I received the day before. I hope this set is correct. We are invited to a town council breakfast in the morning at 7:30.
Today
it is already 40 deg C with the most beautiful cumulus clouds at about 8000ft
above ground. The task is three and a half hour minimum time with a three
hundred km minimum distance. The forecast is for 8000ft to 12000ft above ground
cloud base.
You have no idea what it feels like on the grid at these temperatures. I am including a pic of our team T-shirts front and back. Between the Lithuanian team and us we seem to be the best presented.
Pilots are back and we are of to glider scrutinizing. Gliders are weighed, measured etc. From now on the glider must be in the exact configuration that it was during scrutinizing. So we put in drinking water, logger’s etc.
Pilots reported fantastic flying with four
to five met climbs. On the way back, Uys nearly got caught by the sea breeze. He
started off on final glide with 2.5 mc setting with a thousand metres over final
glide. He finished up having an eye to eye with truck drivers on the highway
just short of the runway. This caused the chairman of the owner club having to
come to have a CHAT to me. My explanation was that we are so good with our final
glide calculations because of the Palm navs that we don’t really need
airbrakes any more. There are not many people here who have them so this really
must have him wondering. By late evening there still was no results so we will
only find out in the morning what happened.
There was also a two-hour team captains
meeting where every single aspect of the rules seems to be up to discussion.
This fascinates me to no end, as there seems to be no hard and fast rule on
anything. There seems to be paranoia about team flying so we only have two spare
frequencies. You can imagine the chaos. The Lithuanian team has simply hijacked
one of them so that nineteen other teams have to share one. The end result is
that all the teams that can speak another language, including radio Potchestroom
have found themselves another channel. Request from Uys that emails also to be
sent to uysjonker@xsinet.co.za &
gartht@aviation.denel.co.za .
We have results from yesterday with Atties distance, at 380 km with a speed of 105.36 kmh and Uys , At 416 km with a speed of 104.24 kmh. This gave them positions of 20th and 22nd. The winning speed was 127,15 kmh by a Polish pilot. The top ten pilots all achieved above 120 kmh. This tells me we have a LOT of work to do. There was no task set for today and free flying is allowed. But with a warning that it was unlikely that the pilots would get back, because of the sea breeze. We then decided that we would sort out the trailer plugs and connections. The pilots are relaxing at the pool and I am analysing their flights in conjunction with one of the pilots that did 125kph, to see where we are going wrong. Tonight is the official opening ceremony where we have to march with flags and get introduced to everyone.
Hopefully we will be able to send some pictures tomorrow
Just when we thought we were well presented,
out come the Brits dressed to the nines in the 40 deg heat. They must have died
in those Zoot suits but I take my hat of to them.
The opening was quite a grand affair with brass bands, and lots and lots of politicians making speeches. There was quite a funny part to the affair. At the end of the speeches there was supposed to be a glider fly pass with aerobatics over us. This affair was in the middle of town about five km from the field. At what they thought was the right time they were towed upwind and released. There they sat circling lower and lower waiting for the signal to do their thing. But the speech just kept going on and on. All of us pilots were watching these poor blokes circling and sweating. Eventually they just sneaked over us and squeaked into the airfield.
They made a point of the fact that South
Africa won first prize by getting the Worlds at the end of the year, and the
Club class was second prize.
The task for today is the first AAT with three-30km beer can turn points. The fact that the beer cans overlap each other makes it rather a weird task. I think the have very little experience with AAT over here. We will see!
After doing the analysis yesterday I think
I have identified the problem as simply flying too slow between thermals. The
thermal climbs were good, so the instruction for the day is FLY FASTER.
We were on the grid today until 2:30 when the
task was shortened and eventually cancelled. The reason for this was because un-
predicted high cirrus moving in over the task area. The result of this was that
the temperature only got to 34 deg instead of 37-38 that they were expecting. A
snifter was sent up but he reported half metre lift to 2000 ft, and soon he was
back on the ground. It is absolutely amazing what temperatures it has to get to
here to trigger decent thermals. If we had to enter these temperatures into the
soarcast program at Orient it would tell you to wear a pressure suit, never mind
using oxygen.
Task for today will be a assigned area task with a min time of 2hrs and a radius of 25km around 2 turnpoints. Take off time will be a 14:00 and a temp of 40 deg C is needed for a task! Well at the field the temperature got to 45 deg.
Instead of an overview from me, I thought I would let the pilots give their ideas of the flight. Needless to say we are now on a high of note. To have achieved a first and second place is beyond belief, given the type of competition they are up against.
Weather at Gawler is definitely not too easy.
The first practise day we had almost easy weather – there were clouds and they worked. The thermals were predictable, smooth and 3-4 m/s ones were all around. There were no surprises like sea breezes and thermal were still good after 17h00. It is quite amazing to have the sea visible all flight. I had my first experience of the sea breeze – this time a good experience. The breeze came in on our final glide and like a mini front everything just went up – even a Cirrus at VNE. I couldn’t get below 400m at the finish line.
The second day was even hotter. Temperatures exceeded the forties. The weather was something of note: Cloudbase was 3500m AGL and thermals exceeded 5m/s. I flew out to the north to a place called Orroroo, 240kms from Gawler. Thunderstorms reminded me of Mmabatho, complete with lightning and dust fronts! My second experience with the sea breeze was not as good as the first one. It started as early as 14h00 and cut off all thermal development. With a 20knot headwind an empty Cirrus performs very much like a brick. It also confuses your final glide calculator’s wind calculations until it is too late: the sea breeze layer is very strong the last 300m and increases in strength lower down. I used 1400m the last 22km with a very low McReady setting and just finish without having to use airbrakes.
Two superb soaring days were followed by two not flying days. This happened despite the fact that the thermometer indicated low forties.
The next practise day is difficult to describe in words. The weather forecasters thought it would reach 42 deg C. The morning started with high Cirrus clouds. This confused the three weather men completely: "It will be either very bad or very good." Because of this uncertainty the task setter set a mediocre assigned area task. Probably very inexperienced in setting these type of tasks, only circular areas around 2 turn points with radii of 25km were set; minimum task time 2 hours. This limited their task to suit only for weak weather and 1st launch was only scheduled for 14h00! At the end of briefing, all the cirrus clouds were gone and the temperature started running away! By South African standards the weather looked perfect but a early launch was refused by the officials. Two o’ clock on the grid…… All the competitors were called for a task change. The set task is too short! As this was not enough the wind swung around and halfway through launching the grid was moved to the other end.
Coming off tow I climbed "slowly" away in a 3-meter. When I reached 2500m (that, by the way, is AMSL and almost also above ground) I saw gliders really high above me, about 2000m higher! When I reached cloud base I could not believe my altimeter: 4650m above ground! And that was cloud base for the day!
The start gate opened eventually at 15h30 and Attie and myself started 15h40 – yes that’s right 15h40. My first thermal was slightly off track – a veld fire just started and I arrived there just when the smoke was my level – now a bare 7000ft. Luckily there was only one other competitor in the smoke at my altitude. (I only saw him after a couple of turns!) I climbed to 12000 ft reaching maximum lift of 6.7 m/s. (This was in the middle of the 2nd assigned area.) The track to the first sector was blocked by a thick cirrus layer so we opted to stay on the edge where there were some mediocre looking cumulus clouds. These produced consistent 3 – 4 m/s thermals. The oddest thing was the fact that the ocean was visible for the whole flight, laying about 30 km to our left. On reaching the first sector we realised that a part of the sector stretched over the ocean! We penetrated to the far side of the sector and turned after 1h for a speed of 109 km/h. This was into a 21 km/h head wind, so we expected a good run back home. We were slightly concerned about the time left and had to go as deep as possible into the second sector. With no reduction in thermal strength we reached final glide height about 70 km out. I saw Karl Streidieck on the way back but he went in a strange direction that made me wonder. Our sea breeze experience resulted in very conservative finalglides (200m too high).
We felt generally good about our flights and were delighted to see the scoreboard with 126.8km/h and 127.2 km/h which was good enough for 1st and 2nd for the day. Karl did 111 km/h in a Hornet. The team spirit is really up and we look foreword to tomorrow (Sunday) for the first competition day.
Well today is the first competition day and we have hell of an act to follow from yesterday. The competition weather gremlins have struck and the day was cancelled. After the task was cancelled Uys took a 2500 ft launch to check his instruments. One glide all the way down.
The Gremlins are still here. It is 2:30
and today has also just been cancelled. We are not getting to trigger temp.We
now have 8/8 alto cumuli above us and the temp is down to in the twenties.
As normal when there is no flying there is a
lot of chatting and debating on various subjects. The most interesting
discussion has been on the future of gliding and the club class in particular.
The general consensus here is that the world class is a dead duck because you
now need new gliders and even average performing new gliders are expensive. We
in S.A will certainly not buy them. All of the countries have stockpiles of the
types of gliders that we are flying here. The fact is that you can now fly
regional, national and world championships without having to be wealthy has got
to be the way to go. If you take the volume of new gliders coming into S.A. then
our nationals in twenty years from now will consist of about five gliders. I
think if we really market the club class in S.A. we can really build up a
vibrant class that can last for years. There will be a lot of gliders appearing
out of hangers and trailers that we have not seen for years. The second hand
market for our old ships will also show a revival. I think it needs a nucleus of
people to fly it and promote it.
Today the gliders were washed and checked
first thing in the morning, as early as 08h00! The skies were initially
cleared, but by 09h00 moisture had moved in. Yesterday one of the rules
was changed. The 100-point penalty for using the remote finish point was changed
to a penalty of 10% of the winner’s points. Today at briefing this
change was reversed! The pilots unanimously booed the decision. From the start I
have been commenting on this make up the rules as you go system. If you have
rules then stick to them no matter what.
Today had the most unique T-phi
diagram I have ever seen; the graph was from bottom left to top right. There was
a temperature inversion from 1000ft to 4000ft ensuring that there would be no
thermal activity unless the temperature exceeded 40 degrees! Therefore the
day was cancelled at briefing.
The team spent the afternoon in the
Barossa valley, tasting various wines and liqueurs. We had lunch at a
German restaurant in Tanunda about 25 km away. By 15h00 the alto-cumulus
seemed to have burnt away.
We spent the next three hours writing
SUA files for the airspace in this area. For a small fee, we’ll supply
these to the other competitors. We have decided to sell the data for twenty Aus
$, and then they get a free S.A. t-shirt. This is because that we are not
allowed to sell our t-shirts on the field.
We hope to have better news tomorrow…
(After all the advise at Gyps from the ex-French team captain to carbo-load in
the morning to be able to concentrate during the whole flight, we have now
picked up 15kg per pilot because of the lack of flying!)
Yes yes, the day is on. Blue skies and the
temperatures are on the way up. For some strange reason we cannot get into the
Soarcast site from any of the computers around here, so thanks to Steve we have
the Adelaide accent, and it tells me there is a serious inversion at about 5000
ft, but fairly good lift up to there. From the weather briefing we have learned
that it will be warmer in the north, giving a higher base. We have decided to
set our PST task up in that area. The task is a four-hour task with a minimum
distance of 250 km and a choice of two mandatory turn points. First launch is at
12:45. That means that we will only be able to start at 2:00pm, and finish after
6:00pm.
Our boys are off. We started late so that we
could use the other pilots as a vario. I hope it works, as I am told that in
Aus, that it is not the best tactic. We will find out soon enough.
In fact I have now found out that we started
last, at14:34pm. That means the earliest we can get back is about 18:30pm.
At this stage we do not know if we should
laugh or cry. We have Uys down at 130 km away ( the second furthest away
except for an Aus pilot) and Attie back home. Twenty-five pilots down on fields.
Five pilots down on the remote finish. Total 30 away from home. All the Aus
pilots down, and away from home. Attie ran to a turn point, that if he got there
he would have out landed, so he turned around, and did not make it, so it cost
him 40 km and about 10kph in the task. With all the pilots down the scoring
system had no idea of what was going on, so we will have to wait until the
morning. The one thing for sure is whatever plan the Aus team had, it did not
work.
With the scores available now and we have no
idea how accurate it is, it has Karl in the lead. If so it still shows that the
old Fox still has some tricks up his sleeve.
Results are: Karl
USA.
1st 84.74
kmh 1000 pts
Attie
S.A.
20th 64.08 kmh 778.4 pts
Uys
S.A
38th
229km
435.9 pts
The Brits did well by getting a 2nd and
5th .
Instruction for the day is, FORGET yesterday,
and do not try and fly on your own with what we have as weather data. With us
starting late, Uys caught the Striedieck gaggle and slowly got to the top. When
he started having to wait, he left and flew on his own, and I think that was his
un-doing. Attie flew the first part of the flight on his own, and when it got
late and worse, he found the same Streidieck gaggle and that in turn brought him
home. The forecast is even worse than yesterday, with lower operating
altitude. Also yesterday with such low tops it was not a good idea to fly north
in the high country, because it made your operating envelope even less.
We have two and a half hour task
with a minimum distance of 120km. We have sat with the local version of Helmut
to work out the best task in the best area the day will give us. Over the days
we have been here his met and combined gliding knowledge have made him more
reliable, than just the met man. He was also quite annoyed that the Aus team did
not use his advice, so I decided that we would.
Our pilots are on task. The task has been
shortened to a two hour task. Two pilots are down as I send. Our blokes still
doing well. Start times were 15:26.
Uys went down on the way out and attie again
got back at a speed of 65kph. Top speed of the day seems to be about 74kph. This
was achieved by Looisen of Holland. The Brits again got 2nd and 3rd . Atties
speed seems to have given him 15th for the day. It seems to have brought him up
to 13th 14th overall, as he beat quite a few of the top blokes from
yesterday.( The reason that I am so vague is that the scoring here is nowhere
near as sophisticated as Gyps.) This is in line with my plan A and that is to
finish in the top ten. Attie stuck to the game plan and started late and then
caught the Streidieck gaggle and simply stuck to them, thereby beating them. Uys
battled to get to start height and had to start so late that he could not catch
anyone. Again it proves on a blue weak day you cannot fly on your own.
Results:
Loosen Holland
1st 76.08
kph 938.4pts
Attie
19th 64.8
kph 689.0 pts
Uys
42nd 80.8
km 130.5 pts
I will post the cumulative scores and
positions later
The Brits again 2nd 3rd and 5th , they really
are flying well. I will get the overall results later. The highest score before
Bruce Taylor from Aus came back was about 550pts. He then did three and a half
hours and that then destroyed the devalued day. Why someone would want to fly
that long on a 2 hour set task, bad, bad day is a mystery to me.
Today’s task
is a five-hour AAT with three beer cans. My advice is that they fly to the very
ends of the first two areas and then see what the third brings. As the set task
might just be too small for the speeds we might be able to do.
They are off and flying together. Started at
13:22, so we will only see them way after six.
While I now have some time I would like to
explain the Grand Prix class. Quintin is going to love this task. After everyone
launches, a set time is decided on. Ideally about twenty minutes after the last
launch. That is the start time and that is the only start time. Ideally you must
position yourself that you go over the start line on the start time or just
after. The tasks are normal tri-angle with set points, and are relatively short.
The scoring is simple. Exactly like motor racing, 10pts for 1st 6pts for 2nd 5
for 3rd and so till 6th place gets 1pnt. As you can see there is a lot of
emphasis on winning so just flying with the gaggle also does not work. This type
of flying needs very little sophisticated scoring and can be run on Saturdays
before our normal Sunday comp, or on any day for that matter. It needs very
little infrastructure to run it.
I have just had a call from
Attie to say that Uys might be landing out bellow him. I certainly hope not
because we might just have a case of Hara-kiri on our hands.
I just phoned Uys and
after ridge soaring some trees for about five minutes he managed to get away
again. He needs a good flight. This is REALLY up to the minute reporting.
Both pilots are back and are exhausted. They have been in the air for over 6 hours. They report that it was like our winter flying but for 6 hours. The experience of Uys is something only he can explain, and I will have him put it into writing a little later, but it was so low that for about 5min he could not complete a 360 deg turn. I have put their flights through Tasknav and it looks like their speeds are about 78kph with a distance of 405km.
My reports are in danger of becoming a lot shorter as my hard drive on my computer seems to have packed up. Ian has been kind enough to let me use his to keep you blokes updated.
Results
Taylor
Aus 1st 1000 pts
92.71kmh 18th pos overall 2122pts
Attie
S.A. 20th 730.6pts
75.18kmh 16th pos
" 2187
Uys
S.A. 43rd
713pts 74.17kmh 41st
pos
" 1269
To give a measuring stick Streidieck is
12th overall, and it is an indication of the quality of the competition over
here.
Today is again a AAT with a
minimum time of three and a half hours. There is supposed to be a front coming
through just after they left, an I think it could be difficult for them to get
back to base, but we shall see
No computer and a retrieve made it a bit difficult for a report.
Day 13 had Uys back and Attie down in the
Remote finish after he was sending me heights and distances from about 60 km
away. I was sitting with a calculator and at 18 km out we decided he was about
100ft short, and made the decision. That decision of course cost us a 100pts off
his score.
Yesterday Attie went through the
start gate and never saw one more thermal. That only gave him about thirty km in
total distance and certainly did his total score no good at all. Uys and
everyone else crept across the ground for about 45km. This took most people one
and a half hours. Once there they went straight up to 10,000 foot and smoked the
rest of the task. Evidence of how difficult that first leg was, is that 13
pilots landed out.
Attie is now 34th and Uys is 39th
The rest of the comp we are going to do the
best we can, and learn where we are making mistakes. The one thing we all admit
is that we know nothing about team flying as it is practised here. Uys made the
comment that he was shocked to see in the air how well some of the teams have
perfected the art. If anyone in gliding thinks that team flying is going to go
away then they have another think coming.
We as yet have no final results for yesterday. Both our pilots went down. Attie at about sixty km out and Uys about 90km. From what I saw on the board it puts them about the 30th position. We had a total of about 20 out landings.
We have had between four and six out landings as a direct result of the non-ability to decide when to turn around and come home. WHY you might ask. ANSWER is that when we set the task at home in our club comps we make the decision for them by setting short flyable tasks. When you come here and fly with the big boys they set every task to its absolute limit. The choice is yours when to turn and come back. I will bring back the famous TOO LONG task that I set in our club comp a few months ago, and had to live with the e-mail bashing afterwards. We must make up our minds if we want to pamper our pilots because if we don’t then some of them might not want to fly, or do we want to practice for the real world, and have our team at the top where it should be. As Steve said then!! Do we want to be mediocre, or do we want to win?? This last paragraph was written after our self-analysis and by the request of the two pilots.
The Brits were on cue and took first second and third yesterday. They are flying like a dream and are willing to part with their team tactics and the way they practice. Our guys have spent some time with them.
Last night was the S.A. and British team night, and we put up 250Aus Dollars each for the beers for the evening. Every second night different teams buy the drinks for the night. With us having to do the long retrieves, we got back as the party was at the end. They did at least keep a few beers for us.
The weather today is like the last practice day with a temperature on the grid at 44 deg c. The task is a three and a half hour PST with one mandatory turn point. They started at 14:22 and they were at 11000 ft.
Just when we thought things could not get any worse, it DID. Fourteen pilots including our two (all seemingly in one gaggle) floated into controlled airspace before the start. They were 8500ft in 4500ft airspace by two km. The most ironical of all this was the fact that I was the one that wrote the airspace file for all the contestants. The hypnotism of being with a large gaggle (including Karl Streidiek) and thinking that there are so many of us that we can’t all be wrong? The end result was Zero score for all fourteen pilots for the day. And to top it all our guys flew quite well and achieved 103kph and 101kph. This would have been around 14th place. The mood around the camp was very sombre for a while. I personally felt that the penalty was very severe.
Today was like a very bad Mafeking with the task being cancelled in the air just before the start because of a wall of water approaching the field.
Rain and more rain
Last day and we woke up to rain. As the met said, the rain cleared and a two and a half hour AAT task was set. They are on task and the sea breeze has come in and I think they are going to battle to get back. I will do the final report tomorrow.
Well the end result took a lot longer than I thought as I ran out of any type of computer power until I got back to South Africa. The day gave Attire 11th place and Uys 14th.
The final result then for the competition was Attie 38th and Uys 40th.
I think after a careful look at the results there are quite a few points to ponder over.
Regards,
Francois
(SA Club Class Team Manager)
Web posted at: 10h24:25 CAT 26th January 2001