Saturday 23.4.2011
The morning was almost the same as yesterday, up after 6, a walk at 7, shower and breakfast. Teams left to the airfield at 8, hour earlier than yesterday. I left after 9, used the bus no. 19 which leaves close to the hotel and goes to the airfield. Bus was on time, ticket 60 cents(!) and travel time 10 minutes. Easy. I walked straight to the briefing, which started at 9:30 already. We heard safety things again and then they gave a new task…except it didn’t look that new, as the distance was almost same as yesterday, only few hundred meters longer.
Towings started before 12, and suddenly all the first gliders started to land back. We thought that if Wolfgang Janowitsch is landing back (as he was), there must be something wrong on the weather. Vladimir (contest director) soon decided to stop launches for awhile, and then we hung around the gliders, as you can imagine. Task was changed in to task B, but not much difference in the distance, as it was just over 500 km.
Our Finns started the task around 14:00, which meant that flying 500 km had to be done fast as possible, and we would see late landings.
Meantime the pilots were struggling in the air, we – the crew – had our own “first day lunch”, some bread, parma ham, salami, olives, cheeses, salad and of course sparkling and red wine. But when the day would come to its end, we would need all the strength. In the afternoon trailers started to leave the airfield. Even the weather over the airfield looked pretty good, obviously it wasn’t that good on the route. And wind started to blow, it felt like the weather was changing.
Both our Duo Discuses which have engines, used those, and landed back at the airfield but the other two landed out. Again we had the same question on our minds, why do they set so long tasks even they could start with a shorter one instead, which most would be able to finish, and so all would get nice beginning for the competition. But I’ve heard that these guys here are quite skilled on task setting and they really can read the weather and set a task which would be possible to fly through, but there isn’t any time for hesitation.
