28.6.2014 – Saturday, beautiful day, valid competition

The weather was really nice already in the morning, I would say that it was traditional gliding weather. It looked like that anyway.

Matthew Gage (flying ES), had some problems with his gear when he landed back right after towing, even the gear was out and locked, somehow it collapsed back inside, and so there was a long white stripe on the runway and it was clear that he wouldn’t fly anymore today and there would be some repairing to do.

We had quite a lot of spectators here, about 200-300 people, which was perfect as we had nice weather and some action. Also reporter from Häme newspaper was here and I took her to meet Antti Lehto and Nikke Luukkanen as they were second on total results at that point. Also she met the Jones brothers who were leading the 20 m Multi-seat class by winning the day three times in a row. This Saturday would be the fourth day for them, but we didn’t know that at that point. Both Antti ja Jones were quite happy of today’s flight, but Janne Nord, Swedish pilot who was leading the Standard class results told that this day wasn’t good for him and he knows it already.

Well, we have now four flying days, that means that the championships is valid!

International evening

In the evening was time to have one of the gliding competition traditions; the international evening. Before the competition some of the members of the organization, who never had been in international competitions, asked what the international evening is all about. I told them this: teams would go to the briefing hangar, take the tables, arrange them as they please, put up the food and drinks, then people would walk around and eat this and that and drink several different colored hard liquor and they would go behind the hangar and feel sick.

This is exactly what happened, except that due to the alcohol license laws in Finland we had to take the tables outside from the hangar, since the hangar is under Cafe26 licenses. But being outside didn’t actually matter at all, just the opposite. The evening was most beautiful summer evening what you could hope for after having so terrible weather for so long.

The food again was familiar specialties, herring from Sweden, sandwich (smörgås) from Denmark, Parma ham and parmigiano from Italy, Australian red wine, potato pancakes from Czhech rep., maultaschen, sausages and beer from Germany, hot dogs made by USA, weird looking cake from Lithuania (Šakotis), lard with rye bread and pelmeni with sour cream from Russia, pastis, wines and pate from France, vodka’s from Slovakia, Romania and Poland, cucumber sandwiches and Pimm’s from UK, honey biscuits and orange liquor form Netherlands, caipirinha from Brazil, red wine drink from Argentina. Sorry that I can’t remember everything, as some of the vodka erased my memory.

Or perhaps it wasn’t vodka, but the red wine instead :-)

Later we heard hits from 2014 to year 1976 (the year we had World Gliding Championships here last time). Hits were played by DJ Repe, the master of costumes and styles. We all were hoping that we would be able to take it easy (on the alcohol), but when it was clear that it didn’t happen, we were hoping secretly that tomorrow wouldn’t be flying day. Of course you shouldn’t hope for that when the weather has been so bad.