This year we had 29th Jannen Kisat (Janne’s Competition) in Räyskälä. Competition is open for all, and this year wasn’t any different, we had both new and old competition pilots. Old meaning if not age, the experience in competitions anyway :-) Altogether there were 23 participants, 10 in Club class and 13 in Open class, both classes were handicapped.
Usually the competition director is the general manager of Räyskälä, so this was Riku’s (Rissanen) first time as a competition director. He has been flying in competitions before, so he knew what to expect. My task in this organization was to take pictures and write news on competition website and update the site when needed.
Competition started on Sunday 10.7.2011, since gliding Nationals ended on Saturday in Nummela and some pilots and planes were coming from there to Jannen Kisat.
Sunday 10.7.2011 First competition day
I had a morning walk around foggy airfield, and the weather was still quite gray during the opening ceremony which we had in front of the Café 26 at 9:30. During the briefing clouds started to disappear and sun started to shine. Towings were supposed to start at 11:45 and after all we started one hour later at 12:45. At this point weather was sunny, pretty warm and looked really good.
Also at this point I ended up as crew for HE, Eric Heinonen. I helped him in Nummela and he didn’t have a crew here either. I wouldn’t have taken his car keys if his glider didn’t have an engine… So I took some photos in the grid, helped Eki to start and drove his car from the airfield. We had quite relaxed day, having lunch and hanging around the café, I spent the day with AB and 2W crews, Kimmo, Tuula and Wille.
We followed the weather of course, as there were some high clouds in the South, just over the Open class task area. We heard some harsh comments about the weather on frequency. The weather looked like it was improving during the day, but it was getting worse later again. Several planes either landed out or didn’t finish the task. At this point Monday’s forecast didn’t look even that good as Sunday’s did.
