Third task - 77 kilometer triangle. The rigids are much faster on this task. The
scoring seems to have eliminated the departure and arrival points. Also there
are no start intervals.
Gathering to remember Dan Murphy and to give our support to Kurt
("weird brother") Schmitz.
There’s been a lot of interest in getting together at Funston tomorrow afternoon
in honor of Kurt and Dan. I’d like to put some kind of time around it so Dan’s
family (they’re in town now) can see the support and so the rest of the pilots
have an idea of when others will be there.
So please plan on being at Fort Funston at 3 pm. I hear some people will be
bringing bbq's and beverages.
Does anyone know if Kurt's family is in town? If so, please invite them along.
1. Jon Gjerde NOR (393.47)
2. Guido Gehrmann GER (390.82)
3. John Heiney USA (378.98)
Apparently Aaron Swepston couldn't get his glider on the British Airways
airplane because of the recent arrest of terrorists planning to blow up US bound
airplanes from Britain.
As I am the meet director for this meet I'll be reporting on them.
It's great to be back in my home state and in beautiful Ketchum, Idaho at the
base of Mount Baldy.
The pilot will be taking off from 9,000' on the south facing launch. Today the
conditions were very light wind wise with an unusual northeast wind. Should be
light north northwest tomorrow. Then the next day the normal south wind returns.
Sun Valley is just over the range (well a huge range) from King Mountain, so
apparently strong winds are common here also. Narrow valleys, and high steep
peaks should bring about "interesting" conditions. I've got three very
experienced local paraglider pilots on the task committee.
Pilots loved flying in the light wind conditions today, but still we had a major
accident with one pilot throwing his chute while up high near launch and then
penduluming into the hillside. Cracked C2 and other vertebrae. Neck brace for
six weeks.
The Vertigo organizers accepted registrations well after their
published deadline, so while it was a concern about the registrations not being
sent or confirmed by the closing date, it turned out to not be a problem. The
organizers wanted to have a good meet, a good show, and were very accommodating
in that regard.
Our U.S. Team consisted originally of Mitch, John and myself, with alternates
being Erik Delf and Kipp Bottorff. Eric was next on the ranking list, and Kipp
was eager to compete and was already stationed in Europe on a work contract.
Erik ended up saying that he could not go, obligations and expenses being the
main obstacles. Mitch wasn’t sure if he could swing it either, as it was an
expensive trip and other domestic obligations existed as well.
There was reportedly the probability, possibility of airfare funding from the
organizers for both John and Mitch, but there never was a confirmation of that,
and last that was heard on that idea was that the plan for airfare funding for
them was “fruitless”. Mitch said that he was out, that it just wasn’t in the
cards this time around. So the only ones that were tossing their hats in the
ring were myself, John and Kipp.
Kipp has a new glider, but I suspect that he was a bit less confident with it
than he had been in his previous glider. Add to that the somewhat disjointed
communications between all of us, and he ended up being out of it.
John made arrangements for a glider that resides in Europe, and got his airline
tickets, so he was good to go. I was set as well, but apparently the airline
crackdown was not limited to toothpaste and shampoo, and my load of gear,
harness/chute, “glider” in huge capped PVC pipe, etc., were not acceptable as
check-in items this time.
I’ve had difficulties with check-in before, but making arrangements at the time
of ticketing and having the reservation flagged for oversize excess baggage has
gotten to be reliable, even though there is typically the bit of round robin
discussion between the check in agents and the baggage people and a few other
people, but the results are always the same, except this time. With a refused
glider, that pretty much is it.
I think that pretty much is how we ended up with only one pilot as our
representative. I don’t imagine that travel will be getting any easier as time
goes by, so likely the best option will be to pre-ship glider and gear well in
advance. Never had to do that before, but live and learn.
Takeoff area on a 48m wide an 2625m long concrete runway:
Some of what Corrinna wrote in her blog (thanks to Dave):
After two race to goal flights away from the launch area the
strong west wind quit finally and permitted a closed course task on Thursday and
Friday. The tasks were both , 77 km triangles with start and a goal at the
airfield.
It is Really amazingly, how quickly the sandy soil in the Flaeming dries out and
even after after a night of rain we get again beautiful cumulus clouds.
On both days I flew for a long time with Lukas Bader, Lukas Etz, Gerald Woll and
Hans Kiefinger. Together we achieved good speed. It did irritate me though that
Han's would circle up into the clouds in his last circles.
On the last day a front came through and opened up a small window for the last
task. Fortunately the towing enterprise has been run so professionally that the
field was in the air within one hour.
Unfortunately no one made it into the goal in the flex class, since we were
caught west of the shading at the last turnpoint 15 km from the airfield.
Nevertheless, 2nd place for the task was my best result for the meet.
At the end Steffen Hertling won the German open, Hans Kiefinger became 2., Lukas Bader 3., Oli 4. And I 5.!
TC continued to feel that the first task was not actually really very fair and
should have been cancelled.
The organizers had numerous problems towing the forty four pilots with only five
tow pilots. On this day the launch went on forever. Some pilots landed and again
were towed. Others, for example, Andrea Hetzel, did not launch before the rain
front.
Together with some pilots we submitted a complaint, which was unfortunately not
agreed to by Harry Buntz, since sufficient launch time was provided for each
pilot. Now, while the first towed pilots landed in the goal, the latter landed
in the rain.
Without counting this first task Andrea and I would have been in third place,
Lukas Bader the German open would have won!!! One cannot have always luck.
Next time I will consult with Gerolf, as he writes complaints so well.
The first towing championship in Germany was nevertheless a full success
at a promising area. Now I understand how Claus Gerhard could fly from here to
Bremen. Special thanks at Juergen Ruedinger, who always dropped us (Monique and
I) in good lift.
It's exciting here in Idaho with a few moments of startling
clarity
(Sun Valley, Idaho)
First the moments of startling clarity, ie. when something bad
happens. Sam Crocker threw his reserve while out on the course. He was
apparently okay. Jim Macklow experienced a frontal collapse while slope soaring,
and hit hard. He walked out, but is in the hospital with a back injury (to the
T1 vertebrae). Len Szafaryn is taking him home tomorrow.
The exciting parts were the launches and flights. With a task committee full of
go for it locals they called for a 78 km task out to the northwest to Obsidian
and part way back to Smiley (actual place names used). The weather forecast
called for cloud base at 12,000' to later at 15,000' with ground temperatures at
6,000' at 79 degrees. There were supposed to be nice looking cu's and sure
enough they began to show up just before the launch opened.
The launch is at the top of the chair lifts at 9,000' on top of Mount Baldy.
When there isn't a competition around the pilots are launching right next to the
chairlifts, but there is a huge open area down the hill a bit and that proved to
be a much better launch location. I had heard that it was restricted with only
room for two pilots over the scree, but that was mistaken. No the scree was not
surrounded by unlaunchable (for a paraglider) sage brush, but a meadow of alpine
flowers. Pilots spread out their wings every where.
The task committee called for a 11:30 launch window opening with the start
window opening at 1 PM. They assigned a 5 km start circle so that pilots could
hang out at the peak to the north if they wanted to. That turned out to be a
good idea.
A bunch of non competitors were off before the launch window opened and as they
were going up that encouraged everyone. There were no problems getting pilots
going and the launch quickly cleared away, with lots of pilots being yanked this
way and that as they shot up off the hill.
In spite of the yanking to and fro the climb rates for most pilots were pretty
slow at first, which made for great visuals over the mountain, much to the
delight of all the tourists who had ridden the chair up to the top. Still almost
all were climbing out and only a few drifted down to the LZ.
Soon there was a gaggle at Big Momma, the peak to the north but still in the
start circle, and the lead gaggle was forming up. The cu's were getting thick
over Big Momma and the race was on.
The race passed over Galena Pass (at almost 9,000') and with lots of trees
coming up to the pass pilots were warned repeatedly by Hanza (one of the locals
on the task committee) to stay high, at least 11,000', while going over the
pass. Hanza gave a long talk and demonstration about where to fly during the
pilot meeting and pilots were encouraged to stay on the foothills of the White
Clouds to the east.
Well, most pilots, even Hanza, ignored his advice, when on the west side over
the Smokies and followed the cloud streets up the west side of the valley. Will
Gadd and Len Szafaryn were way to the west, thinking that they were on the west
side of the Sawtooths, at 16,000', and assuming that they were the lead gaggle
and winning the race.
Len and Will followed a cloud street all the way to due west of Obsidian (on the
east side of the valley and on the edge of the foothills), then headed east to
get the turnpoint before turning back and going south down the valley toward
goal. They thought that they were in the lead until they saw goal.
It turned out that Josh Cohn was one of the few to follow Hanza's advice (Hanza
flew on the west side of the valley) and flew up the Boulders on the west side
of the Whiteclouds and was first into goal, followed by Hanza.
Thirty plus pilots made goal at Smiley, which is about thirty percent, so there
should be a lot of happy pilots. The results will appear here:
http://www.flysunvalley.com/USNPC/results.html.
Jimbo is lying here on my living room sofa in good spirits. The
doctors have prescribed a steady diet of ice bags and rest and predict a 100%
recovery. He was kind enough to bring a doggy bag of painkillers back to the
condo His landing under reserve was just hard enough for a slight fracture of
the T1 vertebrae. I'm going to drive him back home to Las Vegas tomorrow.
Subscribing and Unsubscribing to the e-mail version of the Oz Report
You are in charge of your e-mail subscription to the Oz Report. If you wish to unsubscribe or subscribe, click: Subscribe.
Credits
Gerry makes the Oz Report portal much smarter. He is a web consultant and a PHP expert. He's the brains behind the Oz Report
web site, so contact him for PHP
programming services.
The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.
