Welcome to GOAL!

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.

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

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 Tre Pezzi (North East). 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 lonked 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.

twas all but a simple / to many. And i just didnt see it :-(

ff understands "///" ie 7 dont.

Hey Phil - don't mix rats and paracetamol.

It'll stop your mouse working!

mark advises that bos final and task 2 do not display invalid address in opera, and ie7.
pass the paracetamol please :-)

It was all to do with the rogallo re-redirects (now removed)

http://bhgc.wikidot.com/test-html for details.

and now thant i have removed them ,gordon advises me that if anyone uses the rogallo url, they get site doesnt exist.
So they have been re-instated a bit till i get the chance to talk to nigel :(

Results of the British Open series, Round two can now be found on this page:
http://bhgc.wikidot.com/2008:meet-two

It appears Carl came in 8th in the French Nationals, but should have done so much better. There were a couple of really nice days, but low cloud base, stability and wind limited the number of tasks.
The first task was very windy and marginal, and many pilots did not complete the course by choice, but some did get to goal. Carl landed short but I don't know if it was by choice or not…
The second task, despite Carl being on the task setting committee, he managed to go to an incorrect turnpoint. At this point Carl was pretty close to Kathleen well down the scores…
The next two tasks Carl won, and moved up to 8th. so congratulations to Carl on his continued improvement and world class performance!

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.

The updated version of the NAts rules are now available and can be downloaded from here
NATS rules 2008 updated

honest it did! and now its not. researching……..

seems I casn't edit this, but the A team (who won) was:
Carl Wallbank, Gary Wirdnam, Gordon Rigg, Dave Matthews, Malcolm Brown.
The B team came in 7th.
Bruce Kavanagh, Rich Lovelace, Robin Hamilton, Ron Richardson, Dave Shields.

Team scores consist of the top 3 pilots for each team each day. As such the pilots individual placing doesn't directly reflect his team contribution. Looking at he team scores at www.chabre2009.com you will see who scored on which day. You will see that Carl was the star, scoring well for the A team each day, and also placing highest. Carls chances of becomeing world champion are increased as he has avoided winning the pre-worlds. No pre-world champion had ever won the worlds until Attilla finally managed it last year.

The panels selection of the A and B teams was influenced by knowing we were only guaranteed the 5 A team entries, but thanks to careful planning we also got another 5 entires on the first come first served wait list (like the French did). Thus we had some of our world championship winning team on the B team, and Malc Brown on the A team to be sure he got an entry to see how he got on in a big comp with 120 pilots and all the associated pressures (Malcom has won several smaller comps at Laragne, and done well in our nationals).
During the comp we tried to act like one big team with a collective task briefing, sharing retrieves etc.
The good performances by pilots on both teams will make the selection for the worlds interesting in a nice way. The team size should be 5, but it may even shrink to 4…
Lets hope for a lot of tasks in our nationals…

And the winners are…

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

We have done it TEAM GB won at the Pre-Worlds, well done to everyone.

Forget about the tennis my eyes are peeled on the Worlds, excellent work by the British team as they confirm their lead which was established from day 1. Not to mention Gary Wirdnam who is in 2nd place!

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!

I've added some of my favourite hang gliding clips to the video page of this site. Okay so it's purely subjective, but I'm sure those that haven't seen them already will enjoy them.

these links may change or update

team after one task

individual after first task

Not a brilliant start - team lies 7th, but all is not lost as we had 3 scorers in goal plus a 4th finisher. An off day for Rich and Carl with Bruce the best score followed by Graham and Shedsy.

The task was stopped due to a storm, early at 4.00pm, with the positions taken at 20 minutes before that. At that time there were 30 in goal - so it is a relief that we had 3 scoring pilots in and didn't lose out due to that cut off. Our two fastest pilots (on past history) not making it on the first day may just work in our favour as Rich and Carl now have it all to fly for!
First day was canned, second day flown and stopped due to a storm, and third day canned - so not a good weather pattern so far.
Gerolf leads. Who is prepared to beleive he can folloow that through? This is his best chance because he is not renown for recovering from a bad start!

This was a fast and fairly short task, average speed 48km/hr. Its difficult to outfly the locals on a task like this and Bruce was 20 minutes outside the best time of 2 hours 5 mins or so. The task was just long enough to score the 1000 pnts. Generally the Brits are at their best in longer, more difficult tasks. I'm also not sure how much free flying in area the weather has allowed in the days before the comp (Shedsy is the only team member to visit last year and he was late to arrive, due to fog descending on the oil rig!).

The first competition day - 9th june - was cancelled because of the bad weather conditions. All pilots were at the take off area - but unfortunately there was no chance to have a good task. But: tomorrow is a new day - and an new chance:-)

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

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

If you go to your pilot log in the nxcl, and click on "map flights" you will get something like this.

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.

Its done n'ow!

Its obvious to anything that cant wipe it's arse that the plural of arse isnt arses.

Best regard's,

Charlie Big Potato's :-))

"… and, while I was their, I brought too pounds of apple's two, there delicious, go on - have won…"

and if its plural?