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Saturday 5.12.2015 – One week left

Today Simon Hackett arrived with his own PC-12, a nice looking aircraft. Simon is very important person for Australian Junior Gliding Nationals as he has been sponsoring it from the start if I understood it right, he gave an inspirational speech at briefing. Simon Hackett has worked on the development of the Internet since its early days in Australia. In 1991 Simon founded company called Internode which became a very large Internet Service Provider. Simon has supported junior gliding in Australia since the beginning, providing generous support and sponsorship for the Australian Junior National Championships. His support has allowed the costs of this event to be significantly reduced – a key factor in the success of the competition and junior gliding in Australia.

Simon, and his family foundation The Hackett Foundation, have continued to support junior gliding and has generously made a substantial donation in support of the Junior World Gliding Championships, to help ensure that it is the best event possible.  (Thank you Adam for helping me with the story).

Yesterday’s winner at club class was Australian own boy James Nugent, who is the youngest pilot ever to win a day in an international contest. Think about that, he doesn’t even have his own driver’s license yet. Well done!

Lisa has bought a lot of different things as daily prizes, since we are awarding always the three best of each class. There is always three different prizes, where pilots can choose from. Most popular prize today was an oximeter which you can put in your finger to measure the oxygen level in your blood. Matt Davis was the winner in Standard class and he chose it and so did James. Adam made a joke and said to Matt that he can leave the oximeter in Australia when he goes back home as he won’t be needing that in Great Britain.

Yesterday I was advertising on our website and the facebook that today will be another blue day. That seemed to help, as it looks like the air mass is changing as there were few cumulus in horizon. By saying few, I saw at least four clouds.

At the airfield

As usual, I was in the grid today. Rob gave me a lift there, and we talked how different men and women are in Australia compared to Finland. For example in Finland women have been taught that they are equal with men, and that means that women are used to do same jobs as men and quite often women don’t expect men to open doors for them or bring flowers. Hmm, I could write a book about this topic. Anyway, I have to say that I like it when men are polite and opening the doors for me etc. Rather than saying “I don’t give a s**t, do it yourself”.

In the grid I was standing by Roger’s (SUI) wingtip just when he was about to launch, and suddenly a phone was ringing somewhere nearby. I thought Roger’s crew Pascal’s phone was ringing but he don’t want to answer as he was busy helping Roger to start. Roger started and I saw Pascal holding something, it was a ringing tracker! Trackers are based on phones, but even our scoring boys didn’t know that it would be possible to call to those as they didn’t know that those tracker-phones would have phone numbers at all. I wonder what would have happened if we would have answered to that phone… Perhaps somebody wanted to ask “are you happy with your service provider”.

Tasks were 3h and 3,5h AAT’s today. AAT makes the life quite easy here at the airfield. I mean it is easy because you are able to estimate when pilots are back from the task. We had lunch at Royal hotel with Pete and Wojtek. Their lasagna was great! Before we left, Sandra reminded us “remember to be careful, don’t talk to strangers” etc. warnings. It was hilarious!

In the evening we had a party at the Imperial Hotel, which was very convenient for me, as the Imperial is just next door from my hotel Courthouse. There was some gliding movies, we ate and had couple of glasses wine. But mostly there were organizers, or at least I spent my time with them.

There is one week left of this competition. I have been mostly spending my evenings with Wojtek and Pete, as we are staying at the same hotel, and it seems that the “officials” of the competition are either busy in the evening or having their own dinner arrangements. And it’s a pity that we meet on these competitions with the teams around the world, but we don’t spend time together at all. It would be great to have dinner together and meet you somewhere else than in the grid, briefing or international evening or closing ceremony. But I guess teams are having their own routines where “outsiders” like me do not fit and I totally understand it. It’s a pity, but I understand. Perhaps next time I should be in crew as well :-)

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