The (newly added) graph on the invitation page shows how enthusiastically the Scandinavian soaring community reacted to our decision to hold an Eskilstuna Open this year. As of today, the number of Swedish pilots has reached 30 and the number of international pilots is at 10 (8 of them being friends from Norway). Thus, there is still some margin to the limit of 40 pilots in each respective category. However, the second limit is 80 pilots for the complete contest, so in case there are fewer than 40 pilots registered in one category, the remaining slots places will go to queuing pilots from the other one.

We'll keep in touch...

And don't let the lack of homepage update fool you, behind the scenes we are working very hard to make this the Swedish contest of the year... ;-)

The link is a diary of the above mentioned competition, with photos, results, and commentaries. It's written in Portuguese, but the pictures show a lot.

chavesplanador.blogspot.com

Ahoj čitateľ

Toto je prvý príspevok do blogu AK Nitra pre odskúšanie funkčnosti Soaring Spotu.

S pozdravom

Igor

Hello Soaring Enthusiasts.

It’s the end of Day 3 at the Nationals and I have been so busy, or so exhausted I have failed to keep up. Surely I am not slowing with age?

At the beginning of practice day we only had 24 entries and had 3 towplanes organized to service this fleet. The rule of thumb is 1 tow plane per 8 entries to allow an hour for a fleet launch.

By the end of the day a further 8 entries had been received! Needless to say there was a lot of grumpiness from this Director as he asked the committee for another towplane. In to the night, Chairman Bill was on his phone negotiating the use of Taranaki’s Pawnee and a special “Flying squad” to leave at 7am on Monday to take a pilot to fly the tug to Matamata. A heartfelt thanks for those who stepped up and met the challenge.

As usual we had a number of pilots (funnily some repeat offenders) who ...
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Day 2 Day prizes were presented to the 4 classes being contested.

18 metre
Standard
Club
Sports

The Transtasman “winners free breakfast” was awarded to Ozzie Matt Gage for his excellent first days performance. This competition is supposed to be a competition between a Kiwi and an Ozzie.
In this competition one talks with a Pommie accent, the other a Canadian! Does this mean that “down under” is being flooded by foreigners?

Mmm not so hot in the forecast and blue(no cloud) conditions forecast along with some brisk winds. At noon it was just 20C and it had been calculated we needed 24+ to trigger thermals. After 1pm it was decided that the Sports Class being at the back of the grid would not have much of a chance if launching was started at 2pm.
Sports class day was cancelled.

At 1:45pm a local club flight was launched for what many saw as a sledge ride back to earth….From release it immediately contacted lift and reported 7knots on the variometer …A task was rushed out and the fleet launch started less than 30 minutes later… A lot of gliders flying together started off into a totally blue sky ...
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Well, it took some time to get running but now things are rolling ahead. Of course, our past experiences from previous Eskilstuna Open, Viking Glide and WGC 2006 help a lot. Anyway, a preliminary website is set up and the online registration form has been released. Another list showing registered pilots is available, too. However, this one is updated manually so be patient in case your registration does not show up at once.

Oh yes, we also opened an account at soaringspot.com (obviously) and and now that our own server is relieved of the duty of publishing scoring tables, news, blogs and image gallery, we fully expect limited bandwith and low response time to be problems of the past. Soaringspot, where were you when we needed you in 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002..? ;-)

Oh yes, good times ahead...

So, let's hope for good weather and strong thermals - and welcome to Eskilstuna flygklubb!
We are really looking forward to meet you live & in person.

PS: Check out this aerial photo, actually showing preparations for the regional championships in 2003.