Gliding.fi

Thursday 11th August 2011 – fifth competition day – big gaggles

Weather didn’t look that good in the morning and after a cold night the outside temperature was only +8 C. Again I thanked in my mind that I have a proper apartment with heating, so I send all the sympathies to those who are staying in tents. Hopefully everyone has proper sleeping bags.

Weather was quite clear, but a bank of cirrus and altocumulus was obviously affecting on the weather. Bernd showed few satellite and radar pictures to us, and a big gap was coming towards us. So we hoped that the gap would come here and it would be possible to have a competition day. After the sniffer (DuoDiscus) had flown more than an hour, towings started at 13:30. After the club class had been towed, it was obvious that the weather wasn’t very good. Few large gaggles were right above the airfield. I counted 10-15 planes in each gaggle and they didn’t were flying that high at all. Towings stopped for awhile and we followed if the gliders would stay in the air. They did, but they weren’t able to get any higher.

The gap on clouds didn’t come here as it looked on the satellite pictures, and it even looked like the clouds were changing direction or even stopping. So the day was cancelled. I was expecting everybody to land at the same time so I waited for them with my camera on the roof of our container. But as usual, the weather got better right after the cancellation and I heard that longest flights were more than 4 hours. Standard class gliders had to stay in the grid, as some of the club class gliders were landing back. But as we will use the same grid order tomorrow, they could park the gliders in the grid. How convenient! 

So again it was time to do something else than have a normal flying day. I decided to have a nap, I have been quite sick past few days (just a normal cold).

Some people were cooking and having barbecue in the evening. Team Finland had few torches in front of their caravan, and lots of people were sitting around in a big circle. People were really relaxed – and pretty quiet and having normal conversations. As we have been advised, noise has to stop at 23:00, so evening continued in the club house.  And I heard it continued quite late…

Scroll to Top