The 31st World Gliding Championships for 15m/18m and Open Class are officially open!

The complete Canadian Team from left to right: Pim from Holland, OX crew; George Eckschmiedt from Vancouver, our Hungarian voice; yours truly; Diane from Mississauga, OX crew; Willem from SOSA, OX; Dave from SOSA, PS; Virginia from Waterloo, crewing for Dave, Jerzy from SOSA, XG and Maria his wife and devoted crew.

Looks like everyone had good fun at the opening ceremony in Szeged. The teams assembled in a lovely historic downtown square with their national flags and team uniforms. It provided a great opportunity to get to know the other teams.

I believe we looked pretty sharp in our white shirts featuring the timeless winged maple leaf team logo, Jim Carpenter designed so many years ago.


Eventually, the procession got underway, cheered on by local members of the public who had come out in great numbers to welcome the teams of 35 nations to Szeged.

We marched about a kilometer through the downtown and assembled at a park where we were welcomed by local dignitaries and the president of the FAI declared the championships officially open.

Photos by Maria Szemplinska

Saturday - Official Opening of the 31st World Gliding Championships

Today at 10am was the mandatory pilots' briefing for the Worlds. All teams are now in Szeged. Milan, the deputy CD is explaining once more the local procedures and safety issues. We have seen some pretty hairy flying during the practice days. One guy landed on one of the active runways in opposite direction. It turned out, he had not attended a single briefing yet.

The Canadian Team at full attention. From left to right: Dave Springford (PS); Jerzy Szemplinski (XG); Willem Langelaan (OX) and myself as team manager or team captain as they call it here.

During the briefing and official start of the 31st Worlds, the long awaited cold front moved through with a big bang. For a short time it rained so hard that it was impossible to understand anything in the briefing hangar. The conditions for the next few days will be cooler, with highs in the low 20s but very unstable with overdevelopment and rain showers.

The Canadian Team is now getting ready for the official opening ceremony. Which will be held downtown Szeged. The teams will be marching to the main square where each team will be introduced and its the national anthem will be played. Stay tuned for pix from the opening ceremony...

Last Practice Day

Practice is behind us . I flew all three practice days to check the area and kind of condition in which we will be flying. Because of haze very often we don't see cloud ahead of us and it is a little guessing where to go next. I decided to buy Flarm because of poor visibility and 150 gliders flying in the same area . Today was my first day with Flarm and I was able to see gliders which I would not see without warning from Flarm.

I hope we will have Flarm in North America soon. I had problem with airspace file as Winpilot file had errors. I heard that new published file is clean , I hope it will work as should.

Willem helped me to set Clear Nav today and all works perfect.

Airspace is big issue here as every day different airspace is activated and it takes a lot of energy to set up all as should be. Tomorrow is non flying day which gives us time to make final adjustments to our gliders and instruments.

Serious racing starts on Sunday.

Jerzy

Dave's Practice Day 3

Today was another interesting day.  The launch started at 1155 and I was first in line for the second day in a row.

Immediately off tow I was able to climb to cloudbase at 4500 (42 AGL) and then went and hung out in a quiet part of the sky while I ate a couple of sandwiches before the start.

I started earlier than I wanted to because a group flew past me and started while I was waiting and it was too hot to wait another hour for a more optimal 2 pm start.  According to the LX, the temperature was 36 C at 3000 ft today.

I had a reasonable run along the first leg and averaged about 115 km/hr into the first turn area.  With that speed I decided I needed to go to the center of the first zone since the second zone jammed up against the Romanian border and would only allow to shorten the task, not lengthen it.

As it turns out, I went about 10 km too far in the first zone as the lift became weaker and I got lower and had to stop for weaker thermals and then cut short the second turn as I was now in an overtime position.

The thermals today were a little bit tricky and hard to find and center.  I flew a search pattern under many clouds and just couldn't find the lift and other clouds you could pull right into 5 kts.  There were also large areas with ragged cu and no workable lift and several people landed out today.  My task speed was 97 km/hr a long drop from my first leg speed of 115!

I had a good final glide of about 74 km with an average speed around 125 km/hr for the last leg and that made up for some of the slow bits on the second leg.

Tomorrow we have the Official Opening, so there is no flying and we get a chance to rest after the last 4 days of flying before it starts for real on Sunday!

Practice Day 3 - Update

It was a pretty weak day and we saw quite a number of trailers go out on retrieve.
Both our pilots made it back with reasonable speeds. Jerzy clocked about 105 kph, Dave about 95 kph.

We will be meeting up with OX and crew for dinner tonight.

On the weekend the heat is supposed to break and daytime temperatures will be in the low twenties which is very welcome. However, the weather will also be unsettled. The first contest day on Sunday may be a rain day.

There will be the usual Team Captains / Pilots Meeting at 9:30 / 10 am tomorrow but since we don't have to get gliders ready and watered, everyone is looking forward to the opportunity to sleep in.