--ekru ylla@ami.fi
It's a happy chore to wander down the start line each day, talking to pilots and finally enjoying some sunshine and warm weather. I have to admit I would like to be flying too as I love blue weather and flat country, coming from Australia. The little digital camera has been great fun, looking for happy faces to capture and new angles for pictures of gliders each day. Our bulletin certainly has a first here in R„ysk„l„, using the Internet and transmitting colour pictures of the action. It's particularly great to be on the side of the start line with the Wilgas. It never ceases to stir something in me, hearing all those radial engines start up ready for launch.
The new task had its debut yesterday and all reports tell us that the pilots enjoyed it. Jan Andersen used the last possible seconds, crossing the finish line here exactly on his four hour limit. I hope pilots do enjoy this task as it really seems time to find alternatives to the start tactics and following syndrome. Have fun....
I am very happy for the Hungarian pilot György Gulyas, the standard class winner of Monday. He left early with his team mate Bela Kassai. They flew the task together in a loose co-operation without the big gaggles. They finished among the firsts and had the best speeds in the standard class. It showed clearly that it is possible to win a day even on a blue day without stressful flying in gaggles.
Open class had the great pleasure to fly the four hour cat's cradle. I saw many smiling faces after the landings. Most of the pilots travelled around alone. The best distances of over 400 km is a second clear proof that you do not need gaggles to fly well in blue days.
Monday gave us hope. We will find ways to measure the decision making of the pilots instead of the pushy flying techniques in gaggles. Be careful out there. The cat's cradle may be a task for the other two classes, too.
I stopped at a fuel station to ask directions, only to find it was closed. By luck there was a group of young teenagers round their cars, so I asked for directions. To my great relief one spoke excellent English. I explained about the angry farmer and my approximate directions and without hesitation, he and his friends showed me the way.
I was calling 840 Mel, every few seconds to see if we were close and I was so relieved when I finally heard his voice. The Finnish boy talked to the farmer's son and yes, he knew where the glider was. I followed their car down three miles of dirt road and at last saw the farm, glider and then Mel, thank goodness he and the glider were all in one piece.
The situation sounded hopeless, the farmer was steaming in Finnish so I was told. He was very mad and demanded 500 Finn Marks to release the glider. He looked at us throwing his hands in the air, then stormed off swearing and shouting.
We called the airfield control. Tapio spoke by cell phone for about twenty minute to the farmer. He said later that he had never heard of a farmer in Finland reacting in such a way to an outlanding. He suggested to offer him some money so Mel emptied his wallet, keeping only 100 Marks, showing the farmer that was all he had, except for the small 100 for fuel for the car. He later revealed that he is human after all, removing his tractor and not taking the money. We got out of there as fast as we could, without damage and really minimal damage to his grass. We said good-bye to the boys at the fuel station and gave them some English beer, they had been a fantastic help, so we would like to say another thankyou.
National Gliding Center was established at Jämijärvi in 1935 with German intructors. Many local clubs were founded and construction of gliders started in them. The most common types were Grunau 9 and Grunau Baby of German origin. The glider built in the clubs were sent to Jämijärvi where actual flight training took place. And in the autumns the remains of the most gliders were sent back to clubs for repair.
The progress was very rapid then. Gliding was to became a Olympic diciplene in the games of 1940 to be held in Helsinki. The Gliding Olympics were to be held at Jämijärvi and all the competitors should fly the same type of glider, the Olympia, DFS Meise from Germany.
Then came the Winter War and no Olympics were held. After the wars construction of Finnish gliders started. In 1945 came the first primary glider, Harakka-I, which was based on a Russian glider taken over by the Finns during the war. The second improved version, the Harakka-II, one newly built example of which can be seen here to-day, came 1946 as well as the PIK-5. The latter was quite much based on the Polish Salamandra and it was a real glider, better than Grunau Baby. These types were built in the clubs during the following years. Jämijärvi ceased to be the only gliding site in the country since more and more clubs started to fly at their own places. Jämijärvi stayed as the Central Gliding Center until 1978 when The Finnish Aeronautical Association moved its trainig courses to Räyskälä which was formed to be The Finnish Sports Aviation Institute. Räyskälä is now the place of all the centrally run instructor courses in all disciplenes of sport aviation.
The construction of Finnish gliders continued in Jämijärvi with the PIK-3-series. Juhani Horma was the fourth in the new FAI Standard Class in Lesszno in 1958. The ultimate in wooden standard class gliders was Vasama, which won the OSTIV Price in Argentina 1963 and Juhani Horma was the third in the standard class the same year.
The most widely known Finnish glider is the PIK-20, more than 400 of which were built in the seventies and mostly exported. Ingo Renner won the World Championships in 1976 here in Räyskälä in a PIK-20 which he got as a special price.
The gliding in Finland has been quite stable during the recent years. There are some 350 gliders in use and the annual number of gliding hours is about 33000. There are some 2500 valid Glider Pilot Licences. As the number of Private Pilot Licences is about the same, this indicates the popularity of gliding in this country of 5 million people.
Gliding is officially considered as a sport among other sports and receives its fair share of government subsidies. For example, when Räyskälä center was built, the government subsidy for constructing the buildings was about 90%. Government also payed mostly for the pavement of the runways but otherways the airfield has been built mostly by volunteers.
The future of the Finnish gliding looks fairly good although the ver rising costs have slowed the development.
(All this was written by Jaska Kaskia on Monday morning just by heart without any documents)
I think that, as Team Manager, I can speak rather honestly today, since in yesterday's tasks my pilots had more good than bad results.
I don't know how many pilots are happy with yesterday's flying. At least one of the winners was mad about it, and his anger was only mitigated by some improvement in his overall standing.
At the Benalla WCs' 1987, in blue thermal days, and there were many of them, big, angry gaggles were drifting along most of the tasks (in one of them Leonardo Brigliadori had to land after a collision that cost him half of the tail-plane) and the day results were simply the reverse order of the starting times.
One day a long task was assigned of over 700km, and although the pilots knew well that they had no time to finish the task, nobody wanted to start first, so that the real start was delayed for over one hour. The result was that all of them landed more or less between 650 and 700km after about seven hours of useless flight, with minimum difference in points.
The Swedish pilot Curt-Olle Ottosson said that if all the pilots had flown the task in a DC-9, the result would have been practically the same, with much less trouble.
Here we have not yet reached that point, but it seems that this is the tendency, as we have seen yesterday and as we see today, especially in the 15 metre class, that used to be more independent in comparison with the standard.
I cannot but approve today's decision of the organisers to assign a POST to the open class: they deserved it after yesterday's show. But we should think of more kinds of provisions to prevent such situations, that are not easily acceptable from the sport point of view.
They could be: a different start across a long start line, or different start points as, according to Janet, is used in Australia. Or, as we have seen at last year's Masters in St. Auban: a bonus of some minutes for the first pilot that reaches the first turn point, and/or a multiple horse race start or start block, say every ten minutes; the pilot that starts in between has the initial time of the interval. There are probably many more ideas, that some of the persons present at Räyskälä could express.
Why do we not meet on a rest day, discuss the matter and maybe draw a motion to forward to IGC through its vice president (with a different hat) Tapio?
The cirrus clouds have been teasing us for the third day in a row. On Saturday the clouds approached from the north. It was a question of some tens of kilometres with the most northern turning point. Had the point been a bit more to the south, many more pilots would have come home. On Sunday at noon the situation looked out quite miserable. Luckily the sky was opened and eventually the day became pretty good. Today on Monday, are again cirrus clouds in the sky. The thunderstorms south of Stockholm are transporting moisture to the high levels. This moisture is then advected to us as cirrus clouds.
We mainly use satellite images to observe cirrus clouds. There are two kinds of images available. Normally we look at infrared images on our screen. Infrared channel of Meteosat-satellite is very sensitive to even shallow cirrus layers. It is difficult to estimate the real thickness of the layer. Fortunately we have polar orbiting satellites called NOAA, which sometimes gives us very high resolution visible images. Comparing those two it is possible to identify thick and shallow clouds. Today cirrus clouds seem to be shallow allowing soarable conditions.
Our working station is connected by modem to the computer net of the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Therefore we have access to the same basic material, which is used by FMI's forecasters. The material consists of synoptic observations, metars, soundings, radar images and numerical weather prediction outputs. At the beginning of the competition the most powerful tool proved to be the almost real time precipitation situation in Scandinavia. This picture is a combination of about ten radars. These images you have also seen at briefing in the mornings.
GYORGY GULYAS (Papa) and his team mate Kilo Brave decided they didn't like the cirrus coming from the south so they should start. The two started alone and headed off on the first leg, not the first to start but nevertheless, quite early. The Germans, Italians and French were all playing the waiting game but they decided the thermals were not getting any better so there was no sense in waiting.
Together they flew directly to the first turn as there was no lift behind the lake. Immediately after the turn was a thermal of two and a half metres, which they used to climb from their 500 metres up to 1500 metres. The second leg took them over many forests which gave good and regular lift, however a cirrus shadow before the turn, meant they were only at 350 metres when they turned. Fortunately this was over an airfield. One and a half metres took them back to 1000 metres and then two metres to 1400. Another cirrus shadow before the third turn gave only very weak lift of no more than half a metre. They had enough height to glide round the turn. Gyorgy managed to catch lift of one and a half metres but his team mate dropped behind at this point. Gyorgy used this lift, found in a break in the cirrus, to climb to1300 metres again from the low height of only 400 metres. He flew home from here alone with sun all the way and wonderful lift of average two and a half metres per second.
Tapio was delighted when he saw the results,"Early starters have won the day," he remarked, very satisfied.
Miss Alena from CZE. Our best female pilot.
French team lives with words "In camp area you have to eat what you get". Ollie (dog on right) lives with words "In camp area you have to live on what you can beg".
Pilot of TT taking a preflight nap.
European Gliding Championships 1996 on gei.guenther-eichhorn.com
Dr. Günther Eichhorn Travel Website
Soaring website