Eskilstuna International Open 2008 is over, we had a great farewell party, pilots were satisfied... all is good!

Soaringspot worked really well, except some availability problems ("user ... has already maximum connections"/"invalid registration key" or something) and the annoying thing that in retrospect cancelled days look like nobody has ever flown them, when in fact all pilots were up in the air, produced and uploaded igc files, but only 25% or less managed to fly 100km (handicapped)...

And we never got the hang of folders in the picture gallery. Whenever we tried to create a directory using a template, we got an error message. So we created folder without templates, which are invisable to users. So we had to use a Q&D fix...

We at Ekeby airfield in Eskilstuna used to create our own xsl-termplates for SeeYou Competition as well as manage our own webserver etc... but this typically required >2 people for a larger competition. This time, I was doing the job alone and managed to handle 40 pilots without any bigger problems. For redundancy, we rigged a computer and a LCD projector in our cafeteria, directly displaying the html resultfiles produces by CUC. This avoids internet ...
Read more...

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... ;-)

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.