First couple of days...

Benalla, Dec 28 & 29 2016.

Sergei & myself reached airport after 2 days of wondering around the world and Australia.
First leg was YYZ to Sydney thru Vancouver. 22h. Then we played backpackers all day in Sydney walking around and taking port seeing tour before boarding train to Melbourne where we have car waiting for us. Sergei was at the wheel, my task was to repeat "keep left, keep left, keep... ". Annoying part - he used wipers when turning.. guess why?!

2,5h drive and we reached airport. Jerzy joined us couple of hours later.

Day 2 started with moving gliders out of the container.

After few hours of careful unpacking, we rigged all gliders without any problems.
XG was the first one! 

 All machines were parked in designated spots. Nice touch - all rows are equipped with water valves.

Work in progress, Sergei is trying to unwrap hose. It may take a while - he's electrical engineer, not a plumber!

 If you're curious about how the sky looks like - yes, this is BENALLA! we have rain most of the day yesterday and some heavy downpour today! 20-40 mm rainfall was expected. Still better then snow:-)

Luke's pride is ready!

Jarek (promoted to 15m class blogger by 2W & MS)

We are in Benalla

Maria and myself arrived in Sydney before Christmas. As we had extra
time for travel to Benalla we took longer trip on Princes HWY along the
Tasman Sea and we crossed Australia Alps to Benalla. In addition to
seeing kangaroos we also saw two patches of snow crossing Alps at 1600m
MSL. I didn't expect to see snow in Australia during full summer.
We arrived in Benalla a couple of hours behind Jarek and Sergei. We
tried to work on unloading container,
but because we need two trailers to be able to keep fuselages upright
till Luke's trailer will be removed from container we decided to work
tomorrow when we have access to trailers and full team will be here
except two Marians.
As usual, any soaring contest is great for local farmers , rain is
expected for next day and half.
My glider inspection is scheduled for Jan 1 and I hope to be ready on time.
Jerzy

What time is it in Australia

Some may have been wondering what is the time difference between Canada and Australia. 

Australia is UTC +11, so for everyone in Ontario (at UTC -5) we are 16 hours ahead of you.

Assuming a normal contest day includes launching around noon, that will be 8 PM the night before in Ontario and once we land and pack-up for the day around 6 PM it will be 2 AM in Ontario.

The best schedule for checking the scores and the blog from Canada, assuming that you are not a night owl, will be first thing in the morning, just as we are going to bed.

 

Dave

Assembling a Team

Luke and Joerg are now in flight across the Pacific and will land in Sydney in about 14 hours.  Virginia and I have been here for a couple of days and did a little bit of the tourist thing in Sydney for the last couple of days.  Today, we took the ferry across the harbour to Manly to pick up Luke's and my rental cars and tomorrow we drive over to the airport to meet Luke and Joerg and then we convoy the 680 km to Benalla.

Going on a short trip

We'll soon be heading out on a short trip. 16,250 km from Toronto to Melbourne.