Thursday 4th August 2011 – first flying day, unofficial practicing
In the briefing our met man Berndt got a good applause before and after his weather show. I guess it’s better to give good attention to meteorologist and keep him happy, perhaps that will affect on the weather as well. :-)
Today was the first day when pilots were able to fly. Luckily the weather was again warm and sunny. Towings started at 13:30, and we had really nice cumulus clouds all around. The tasks were 2 hour AAT tasks. I had a walk in the grid and took some photos. Several planes had difficulties at start, and few immediate releases were seen. I guess if the lower wing hits the soft grass it’s not easy to get it up again. This was relaxed flying day, some pilots waited without any hurry that others were towed first and went flying later.
Andrej Kolar “the SeeYou guy” came today to help us set up the scoring. We are still thinking whether we are going to use Soaring spot or do it “traditionally”, meaning having the results on our own server.
Sorry if this blog has been so far about computers and preparations, but that’s what I’ve seen so far :-P Friday should be the day when everything is ready. So still I couldn’t give my full concentration to the pilots, but this is going to change. Luckily the WLAN problems seem to be solved, big thank you to Czech team (I would say that organization owns them few beers).
In the evening we had informal welcome party, with some snacks and free beer. Few welcome words were said by the mayor of Freudenstadt Julian Osswald and Hans-Joachim Fuchtel from the labor ministry. We also enjoyed the music played by Acoustic Vibes. It was really nice, but it felt like that people were still tired from yesterday’s party, and obviously some of the pilots were dragged to bed quite early by their team captains (certain brothers had to go as their mom and dad told them to leave).
At 21:00 First Team Captains meeting took place, it seemed that there were quite many things to be solved, as the meeting ended 2 hour s later. In the evening it started to rain, I left at 01:00 (I wasn’t partying that late, but working instead), and some of the crew members (never pilots ;-) were still playing table football and hanging out in the bar.
