January 1 to 3, 2013

The 2013 New Year started with a bang, actually a lot of quite loud explosions or gunshots. I guess that’s become pretty universal. The party at the Brazilian camp was great with some very tasty “churrasco”, meaning barbecue in Portuguese. There were balloons and Champagne to usher wish each other a Happy New Year and a good luck in the contest for the pilots. Since January 1st was declared to be a flying day, weather permitting, I went to bed around 12:30.

Happy New Year!

The day of January 1st was mostly overcast with low strato-cumulus clouds and a stiff breeze. I decided to work some more on the glider and the instruments and get everything in tip-top shape. I also used the day to test the battery that Luis brought with the glider. The battery passed the test and by the end of the day I was more or less ready to take the Kilo-Yankee on a practice task the next day.

More tweaking and adjusting

The end of the battery test - Passed!

Kilo-Yankee tail showing the flags of Serbia, as well as Argentina, Brazil and Canada

The morning of Wednesday, January 2nd, finally brought some calm weather with clear skies. The forecast called for a fairly good day for flying with Cu’s to the East and dry but strong conditions to the West. The practice task set for the Club Class was a 263 km racing task around 4 turn points. You can see the task here: http://www.soaringspot.com/wgc2012/results/club/task/day-1.htm

I agreed to try to fly together with the two Brazilians in the Club class: Henrique Navarro on Jantar Std. 3 (YY) and Guilherme Purnhagen, Gugui, on Jantar Std. 2 (JB), the same one Gugui let me fly last September in Bahia. As Gugui put I, we are hare together, and flying together would be more fun, as well as advantageous for all three of us. In order to be able to communicate more freely, the three of us will be using the Serbian frequency, leaving the Brazilian frequency free for the rest of the Brazilian team in the Standard and World classes.

The weather turned out to be quite good, with about two octas of Cu’s everywhere and winds from the North West around 10 to 15 km/h. The cloud base was initially around 1500 m ASL, rising to around 1700 m in the afternoon (the terrain is generally at around 200 m ASL). The lift was anywhere between 2 and 4 m/s, quite good and smooth.

On the grid before takeoff

Luis, my wing man crew

Yes' it is this lots of fun

With JB and YY in a thermal

YY and JB in cruise

Unfortunately, the old 4 channel radio (with 3 channels still functioning) turned out to be very noisy on the Serbian frequency, as if the squelch was turned on. To make the noise it bearable, I had to turn it down, which made it difficult to communicate with Gugui and Navarro. As it turned out, we didn’t manage to start together (they left a couple of minutes before me), but we met before the first turn point, then got separated again. We met again soon after the 3rd turn point and managed to stay roughy together until the end. Not bad for the first day of team flying.

All three of us did quite well on the daily score sheet, although at the moment I’m writing this, I am listed as having outlanded after only 119 km. What happened was this: I had to install the climb/cruise switch for my V7 variometer on the instrument panel instead of the more usual location on the control stick. Right below the climb/cruise switch is the master On/Off switch, so you can probably guess what happened – instead of switching to cruise I accidentally killed all the power. Before realizing what I did, I started pulling the spare battery pack for my GPS from the pocket. Luckily, I soon discovered wherein lie the problem, so I turned everything back on and continued the flight. Upon landing, I uploaded the flight logs from both of my loggers. My primary one, Nano, has an internal battery, so the log was OK. My backup logger, Colibri, has no internal battery, and it ended the flight log at that point. The official scorer took the first log he found, unfortunately the wrong one, and scored the flight as if I landed out. Of course I complained, but the score sheet will likely be fixed mañana.

Today, Thursday, January 3rd was supposed to be an official practice day. However, overnight the weather turned South, this time with a very high wind. The official forecast was for a dry day, with so-so conditions, with the wind from 320° 35 to 40 km/h and blue thermals initially topping off at 1000 to 1300 meters, rising to 1300/1500 in the afternoon, not exactly what everyone was hoping for. THe actual weather turned out to be worse than forecast, with wind speed between 50 and 60 km/h and the thermals initially up to 900 m (700 AGL), rising to 1300 around 4 PM. The Club class was first on the grid and started taking off at 1 PM. After about half the Club class was launched, the World class pilots were summoned to a pilot’s meeting on the grid and their day was cancelled. The Standard class stayed waiting on the grid for about an hour, after which their day was cancelled too.

Once up, it was a challenge just to keep from being blow too far south from the airfield. The situation later improved a bit, but I never even considered going on the task. Still, it was a good day for stick-and-rudder practice and getting more comfortable in the Kilo-Yankee, and for practicing the fine art of flying in gaggles with up to 15 other gliders very close by. I stayed up for almost 3 hours, and then decided that I had enough practice.

Flying in a "gaggle"

Above the A.G.Chaves airfield

After landing and tying down the glider together with Luis, I uploaded my flight (just for fun) and tried to connect to the Internet, but without any luck. So, off to the Hotel Paris café again for a coffee, a big glass of orange juice and catching up on the Blog posts and email.

Tomorrow will be the last scheduled practice day, followed by the grand opening on January 5th and the first competition day on January 6th.

Below are a couple of links related to the championship:

The official website of the 32nd World Gliding Championships (WGC) :
http://www.wgc2012.com.ar/

The Results can best be viewed here (I’m flying in the Club Class):
http://www.soaringspot.com/wgc2012/results/

My SPOT satellite tracking page (close to real time):

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0vKPpfkLXpMUN2rpVdFKNKmsyG3p3NAeW