The Panel

Day 2 is a race from Merthyr SW to Ross on Wye with a further distance section to Castlemorton Common. Day started really dreary and unsoarable but picked up later. The pilots who were ready for the change in conditions will probably do best with the later ones struggling.

more on Richards Blog

Overall there were 4 Brits in the top 10: Rich, Malcolm Brown, Nick Pain and Tony Brown.

I guess it is going to be a real battle at the British Nationals this year with all the flying that has already gone on in Laragne: the Worlds, Belgians and the Dutch Competitions. I bet the French will be out for some revenge too after being beaten on their home 'terroir' at the worlds! Should be some interesting watching, good luck everyone involved and hope you have a safe competition.

Day 10

Corrina has a decent lead with Francoise second and Kathleen a close third.
The day has been cancelled due to thunderstorms.
final results at http://www.cucco08.org/

Day 9

task7
Hard to get much above the top from the norh launch and gradually they all had to dive over the back, some getting up and some going down. Kathleen was late dong this and by the time she was at the first most distant turnpojnt it was starting to rain and a group had already passed coming back. Kathleen landed with Jamie just after the turnpoint and was thoroughly soaked (pictures on jamies blog).
half a dozen of the girld got into goal, including corrina.
noy a good day for us, kathleen drops back in the scores, stuff is stollen from my harness in france, and we find out our broken car, in a garage in france, needs parts that will not come until september…

Day 8

task6
Good conditions with 9000 ft base - Kathleen and Corrina took a route back onto Monte Cuco north side from Gubbio while the others went along the gubbio ridge and got ahead of them. Carrina came in 3rd but kathleen missed a climb and finished the race but landed just outside of the goal circle, losing some distance points and 20% of her time points. So now kathleen is 2nd just behind corrina in the scores but it is still very close with two tasks to go.

Day 7

task 5
Kathleen landed in the little hills east of Gubbio over 50k into the 82k task. More than half the compeitors landed below takeoff. she didn't see any other flexwings for most of the flight and she has no idea that Francoise was above her when she landed but dueto the terrain she could only go 1km further than kathleen. Corrina made a suprising mistake at the start and ended up getting flushed on the south west side of the ridge while kathleen was soaring the NE side. Corrina managed to get up from very low indeed and then, unable to make it back over the main ridge ended up flying most of the task a long way off track, but somehow managed to make it into the first two turnpoints, then about two hours after kathleen had landed she was able to make it over the ridge to Gubbio for an extra 8km. Kathleen met the rigid wings coming the other way on the north east side of the ridge and they were a big help finding the very rare thermals on this very difficult day.

todays task
1 SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN, CORINNA DEU 216
2 DIEUZEIDE, FRANCOISE FRA 200
3 RIGG, KATHLEEN GBR 199
4 PETROVA, NATALIA RUS 158
5 KAMINE, AKARI JPN 130
6 LARITSKAYA, EVGENIYA RUS 123
7 BAZAN, LAURA ARG 118
8 HOFFMAN, UTE DEU 108
all other score 97 min distance

Overall
1 25 RIGG, KATHLEEN, (Moyes LITESPEED S) GBR 2767
2 1 SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN, CORINNA, (RED BULL LTSPD RS) DEU 2663
3 9 TOBLER, CAROLE, (Moyes LITESPEED S) CHE 2402
4 7 DIEUZEIDE, FRANCOISE, (Moyes LITESPEED 3) FRA 2377
5 2 PETROVA, NATALIA, (Aeros Combat) RUS 2202

Kathleen still leads by 104 points, now there is a bigger gap to Carole in 3rd and Francoise, womens champion in Nanyo Japan, is very close to third. although there was a great deal of luck involved in todays weak conditions, and the pilots were well separated when flying the course Kathleen and Corrina were still very close. Lets hope for improved conditions for the remaining days!

Day 6

Monday, the task is cancelled 15 minutes after the start time due to big clouds building and the threat of storms.
A task can still count if it is stopped due to adverse weather, but only if it has run for 2 hours or at least one glider has completed the course. When that happens everyone is scored to their GPS position at the stop time, minus 15 minutes.

Day 5

Sundays task is cancelled eventually after they waited on the north launch in high winds with lowcloud. In fact all the competitors just packed up at 3.00pm before any official task call!

Now half way through the comp in days, with potentially 5 tasks left and 3 flown.
1 25 RIGG, KATHLEEN, (Moyes LITESPEED S) GBR 747 977 844 2568
2 1 SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN, CORINNA, DEU 499 994 954 2447
3 9 TOBLER, CAROLE, (Moyes LITESPEED S) CHE 503 958 844 2305
4 7 DIEUZEIDE, FRANCOISE, (Laminar Z9 13.2) FRA 481 861 835 2177
5 2 PETROVA, NATALIA, (Aeros Combat) RUS 590 708 746 2044
Note the points separating the pilots are between 100 and 130 points each place.

Day 4

Task 3. A short task as there was some overcast, with showers forcast later (tomorrow is forecast stormy).
It was very fast being mainly on the ridge, and conditons improved unexpectedly. Kathleen came in 2nd equal with Carole with Corrina winning by 5 mins. The task scored unexpectedly high, 954 for the winner - corrina said in her blog it wouldn't be woth much! (they used only 1.30 time and 50km in the gap program). Kathleen is now leading by 111 points from Corrina with Carol about the same gap to third. Kathleen reports that she made a mistake at the start (only one start time used so far so the tasks are a straight race), and Corrina had the 5 minutes right from the start, but kathleen caught her, then she got away again. No difficult valley crossings in this task and no real mistakes made, and hardly any decisions to be made - fly that task again and it could be the other way round!

Day 3

Task cancelled due to strong winds, just as Kathleen was about to launch.
Day 3 looks more stable and lower cloud base. Light south westerly on the normal cucco launch.

Day 2,

A shorter task off the normal south/west side of monte cucco.
Kathleen crossed the goal line pretty much equal first with Corrina, just 5 seconds behind Corrina (DEU)and 1 minute ahead of Carole Tobler (CH). Kathleen had to do some button pressing to sort her GPS at the last turnpoint and allowed Corrina to get ahead. Kathleen is using her trusty Brauniger IQ with a separate GPS while Corrina has the latest compeo - a better instrument to use with a short last leg of the taskmeaning the final glide starts beofre the last turnpoint (if you are worried about 5 seconds on your goal time!).
Regina Glass and Monique Werner (the same monique that was John Pendry's girlfriend many years ago) had a bad day and didn't get far and now they have a lot of points to catch up.
Its starting to look like its Carole, Corrina and Kathleen that are going to be the lead gagle most days…but the two fast improving Russians are only 20 years old and could come good yet!

After 2 tasks

1 25 RIGG, KATHLEEN, (Moyes LITESPEED S) GBR 747 977 1724
2 1 SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN, CORINNA, (RED BULL LITESPEEDE) U 499 993 1492
3 9 TOBLER, CAROLE, (Moyes LITESPEED S) CHE 503 957 1460
4 7 DIEUZEIDE, FRANCOISE, (Icaro Laminar Z9 13.2) FRA 481 860 1341
5 2 PETROVA, NATALIA, (Aeros Combat) RUS 590 705 1295
6 33 BAZAN, LAURA, (Aeros Combat) ARG 434 606 1040

In class 2, Johnny car blew his launch on his swift and broke a bone in his foot. He expects to end up in plaster so the competition is over for him.

Results for first day (top 10)

1 25 RIGG, KATHLEEN (Moyes LITESPEED S) GBR 747
2 2 PETROVA, NATALIA (Aeros Combat) RUS 590
3 9 TOBLER, CAROLE (Moyes LITESPEED S) CHE 503
4 1 SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN, CORINNA (RED BULL LITESPEED) DEU 499
5 31 GLAS, REGINA (Aeros Combat L12) DEU 493
6 7 DIEUZEIDE, FRANCOISE (Icaro Laminar Z9 13.2) FRA 481
7 3 WERNER, MONIQUE (Aeros Combat L12) DEU 479
8 20 KAMINE, AKARI (Icaro Laminar Z9) JPN 458
9 33 BAZAN, LAURA (Aeros Combat) ARG 434
10 29 YAKOH, MITSUKO (Icaro Laminar Z9 13.2) JPN 426

Day 1

Looks like Kathleen has won the first day!
So far she is the only glider in goal. She found a low save that Corrina missed at about 600ft agl. It was quite windy, launch at Monte Cucco north side -The task can be seen at www.cucco08.org, going south to penino, and then north up to Gubbio and back into Sigillo.
Kathleen had an advantage over Corrina gliding into wind, despite Corrinas new Litespeed RS3.5 (Kathleen is flying my 3 year old Litespeed S4).
Pics on Jamies blog linked below.

Opening ceremony is Sunday with first task on Wednesday (2 practise tasks).
check Jamie sheldon's blog for news and pics.

Forcast according to the rather noddy "metcheck" is light winds with only a few showery days in the next 2 weeks.
17th July was too windy, Carl flew and advised the girlies not to bother. Huge lenticular clouds in the lee of the ridge.
15th/16th July was good flying if a bit blue and stable.

Soon there may be more of the French nats in Jamies blog, but its not there yet…something must be keeping her busy…
http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/

Kathleen now travels to the womens worlds in monte Cucco Italy, where Johnny Carr will also fly his swift in the rigid worlds. Just the two brits will be there.

Competition winner: Scott Barrett (Aus) glider:Airbourne C4 13.5mtr

The organisers of the Pre-worlds have some fantastic web pages that allow us to keep up to date with how the team are progressing. For those that don't have the URLs the links are below.

Official web page with results: http://www.chabre2009.com

A blog that gives you almost an hourly update at: http://www.chabre2009.blogspot.com. The Brits have already had a bit of coverage, I think Carl is captured on film coming in to goal "not first, but close", Gordon gets a mention in a very good interview with Scott Barrett after the first task and I could swear that's David Shields jumping off a cliff into the waterfall… the nutter!

If anyone in Laragne reads this then wish the team the best. Any chance we could get some posts on this site so we can get the latest from inside the British camp or is there something else similar that I am missing?

Go the Brits!

…the usual Austrian weather forecast, tomorrow is better, the day after should be very good! :)

More can be found here :- http://www.drachenflieger.at

note the new button in the top right hand corner. "earth"

click it.

it should then download a new plug in for either ie7 or firefox,
A restart of either browser will then be required.

going back to the mapping page, and clicking the "earth" button will then display your flights in google earth within the browser.

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Many thanks to them.