This was disappointing news for the Team, but it was the right decision. The rest of us salute Bill for putting safety first. Bill and Nancy have left for home.
Friday, January 4, 2013
News about the team
This was disappointing news for the Team, but it was the right decision. The rest of us salute Bill for putting safety first. Bill and Nancy have left for home.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Aeolus wins the day again
We had Area Tasks today, but I don't remember what they were. I forgot to bring my Task sheets to the downtown internet cafe, which is where I go whenever the contest feed croaks.
But no matter. Not much happened today. The World Class Task was cancelled on the ground, the Standard Class was called back just before the Task was opened, and the Club Class pilots, whose Task did open, chose to stick around. Sean and Sarah landed back without making a start.
The culprit, again, was the wind, with weak thermals a contributing factor. Takeoffs and landings were safe only because the giant runways here were aligned with the breeze.
In other news, we're still discussing the Finish procedures that John mentioned, below. Interestingly, the Organisers set three different minimum finish heights today - one for each Class - all of which were too low.
The Club Class ballast kerfuffle seems to have been resolved in a sensible manner.
By the way, I don't think I ever stated our contest IDs:
YG - Peter Deane, LS-8
PG - Phil Gaisford, Discus 2
LG - Sarah Arnold, ASW-20
VN - Sean Franke, ASW-20
VM - Tom McKnight, PW-5
DD - Bill Snead, PW-5
Today is the birthday of Angel Garcia, VM crew.
But no matter. Not much happened today. The World Class Task was cancelled on the ground, the Standard Class was called back just before the Task was opened, and the Club Class pilots, whose Task did open, chose to stick around. Sean and Sarah landed back without making a start.
The culprit, again, was the wind, with weak thermals a contributing factor. Takeoffs and landings were safe only because the giant runways here were aligned with the breeze.
In other news, we're still discussing the Finish procedures that John mentioned, below. Interestingly, the Organisers set three different minimum finish heights today - one for each Class - all of which were too low.
The Club Class ballast kerfuffle seems to have been resolved in a sensible manner.
By the way, I don't think I ever stated our contest IDs:
YG - Peter Deane, LS-8
PG - Phil Gaisford, Discus 2
LG - Sarah Arnold, ASW-20
VN - Sean Franke, ASW-20
VM - Tom McKnight, PW-5
DD - Bill Snead, PW-5
Today is the birthday of Angel Garcia, VM crew.
Good report - Uno
John Good writes about yesterday:
Today was the first official practice day at WGC 2013, the first day of good flying weather since Saturday, and the first without rain since we arrived at Chaves. Pleasant temperatures, moderate winds and a sky full of small cumulus clouds (well, perhaps half full - from northwest through east) has improved everyone's mood.
There was room for improvement. We've seen enough rain, wind, low cloud and cold temperatures to make us believe this was going to be a tough contest. This area of extensive flat terrain, mostly under cultivation, has seen an abnormal amount of rain over the past few months. Many fields have standing water and half-submerged fence lines are a common sight. The airfield had numerous areas of soft ground and mud, which made moving gliders challenging (some were thoroughly "bogged" and had to be rescued with tractors. Takeoff rolls on the wide & smooth grass runways were sometimes uncomfortably long (grass will probably soon need to be cut).
The Otto Ballod gliding club is an old one, dating back more than 80 years. At the eastern corner of the large airfield, an area of tall trees provides shelter and shade for hangars and a camping area. We've seen the need for this in the form of strong winds on several days. New Year 's Eve was probably the champion thus far: Around 5am a sizeable tree came down in the camping area, reportedly taking out three tents and slightly injuring one sleeping camper. Driving downwind that afternoon, I was able to "pace" the shadow of a low cloud (base 2000') and found it was doing around 88 km/hr.
At an international gliding competition there is strong demand for internet access. At the pre-world contest here last year service was reported to be good throughout the camping area. This year, service has thus far been spotty and available only when very close to the contest headquarters building (the problem may have something to do with the winds and their effects on the antennas). We are all hoping this will soon improve, but in the meantime reports such as this one may not always be posted promptly, and flight log submission (which is reasonably easy when online) is clearly going to be challenging. We have rented a bicycle (apparently not always an easy thing to do) and plan to keep a wheeled courier busy shuttling thumb drives and flight recorders from the runway to the Scoring Office, trying to conform with the very short 30-minute time allowed between landing and submission [since changed to 60 minutes, still too short. Ed.]
The practice period usually offers some controversies, and indeed we have a few. A surprising ruling in Club Class says that gliders may not carry fixed ballast, whereas the rule has long been understood to prohibit only disposable ballast (i.e. water). This new ruling means that lightweight pilots may not be able to fly at the standard handicap weight of their glider. This of course raises questions: What is ballast? Does a heavy chain that could be used as a tiedown count? Will all gliders be inspected to ensure they are carrying nothing that isn't essential? We await word on how this will play out.
The announced finish geometry has raised some eyebrows: it calls for a minimum height of 50 meters at 3 km, followed by a "direct" (i.e. straight-in, with no turns) landing. That's a 60:1 glide ratio, which could be a challenge for any glider flying into a headwind - we've seen that Argentina headwinds can be something substantial - and a PW-5 even when winds aren't a problem. Unless finishing at a high speed (which implies poor management of the final glide), a pilot following a 60:1 glideslope has no excess energy to deal with traffic or other problems. When a dozen or more gliders may be finishing together, this could get interesting. Another complication is Ruta 3, the major road that passes close to the threshold of Runway 31 (a common finish direction) and which carries substantial truck traffic. Perhaps for this reason it has been announced that a glider flying across it should be at least a wingspan above the ground; judging from today's landings, this rule will need some enforcement
Pilots reported very good conditions today: cumulus cloudbases were above 5000', and best lift was around 6 knots. The launch took a long time (as is normal on the first full practice day) and the 330-km task for Standard Class had pilots finishing around 6pm, which was clearly a bit after the day had started to die.
Today was the first official practice day at WGC 2013, the first day of good flying weather since Saturday, and the first without rain since we arrived at Chaves. Pleasant temperatures, moderate winds and a sky full of small cumulus clouds (well, perhaps half full - from northwest through east) has improved everyone's mood.
There was room for improvement. We've seen enough rain, wind, low cloud and cold temperatures to make us believe this was going to be a tough contest. This area of extensive flat terrain, mostly under cultivation, has seen an abnormal amount of rain over the past few months. Many fields have standing water and half-submerged fence lines are a common sight. The airfield had numerous areas of soft ground and mud, which made moving gliders challenging (some were thoroughly "bogged" and had to be rescued with tractors. Takeoff rolls on the wide & smooth grass runways were sometimes uncomfortably long (grass will probably soon need to be cut).
The Otto Ballod gliding club is an old one, dating back more than 80 years. At the eastern corner of the large airfield, an area of tall trees provides shelter and shade for hangars and a camping area. We've seen the need for this in the form of strong winds on several days. New Year 's Eve was probably the champion thus far: Around 5am a sizeable tree came down in the camping area, reportedly taking out three tents and slightly injuring one sleeping camper. Driving downwind that afternoon, I was able to "pace" the shadow of a low cloud (base 2000') and found it was doing around 88 km/hr.
At an international gliding competition there is strong demand for internet access. At the pre-world contest here last year service was reported to be good throughout the camping area. This year, service has thus far been spotty and available only when very close to the contest headquarters building (the problem may have something to do with the winds and their effects on the antennas). We are all hoping this will soon improve, but in the meantime reports such as this one may not always be posted promptly, and flight log submission (which is reasonably easy when online) is clearly going to be challenging. We have rented a bicycle (apparently not always an easy thing to do) and plan to keep a wheeled courier busy shuttling thumb drives and flight recorders from the runway to the Scoring Office, trying to conform with the very short 30-minute time allowed between landing and submission [since changed to 60 minutes, still too short. Ed.]
The practice period usually offers some controversies, and indeed we have a few. A surprising ruling in Club Class says that gliders may not carry fixed ballast, whereas the rule has long been understood to prohibit only disposable ballast (i.e. water). This new ruling means that lightweight pilots may not be able to fly at the standard handicap weight of their glider. This of course raises questions: What is ballast? Does a heavy chain that could be used as a tiedown count? Will all gliders be inspected to ensure they are carrying nothing that isn't essential? We await word on how this will play out.
The announced finish geometry has raised some eyebrows: it calls for a minimum height of 50 meters at 3 km, followed by a "direct" (i.e. straight-in, with no turns) landing. That's a 60:1 glide ratio, which could be a challenge for any glider flying into a headwind - we've seen that Argentina headwinds can be something substantial - and a PW-5 even when winds aren't a problem. Unless finishing at a high speed (which implies poor management of the final glide), a pilot following a 60:1 glideslope has no excess energy to deal with traffic or other problems. When a dozen or more gliders may be finishing together, this could get interesting. Another complication is Ruta 3, the major road that passes close to the threshold of Runway 31 (a common finish direction) and which carries substantial truck traffic. Perhaps for this reason it has been announced that a glider flying across it should be at least a wingspan above the ground; judging from today's landings, this rule will need some enforcement
Pilots reported very good conditions today: cumulus cloudbases were above 5000', and best lift was around 6 knots. The launch took a long time (as is normal on the first full practice day) and the 330-km task for Standard Class had pilots finishing around 6pm, which was clearly a bit after the day had started to die.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Serious practice
Today felt like a real practice day. It was the first day that most of the procedures of a contest day were followed, and a large number of competitors participated. Mistakes were made by both pilots and Organisers*, and at the end of the day, we apologized to each other in the cantina.
The weather forecast was 2-3 m/sec to 2000 meters**, with few Cu. They called Racing Tasks* in all three classes, with moderate distances and three or four turnpoints. The World Class was first off, and by half an hour after their last launch we were beginning to wonder if we missed the call to open the Task. Bill and Tom, who are here to practice, not to hang around waiting for us groundlings to sort things out, elected to head out on course. I couldn't get a definitive answer about whether the Task was open, so I told the Team to consider the Task to be open in all classes. That trick works only on practice days, of course. The Organisers promised to do a better job tomorrow.
All five of our pilots had good flights (Sarah chose to rest one more day). Sean made it around without his partner, enduring a double battery failure on the final leg. Bill cut the corner after two turnpoints in order to be home to work on the glider. Tom caught the French team at the first turn and escorted them the rest of the way. Phil and Peter both finished their Task, but had a bit of trouble staying together. The loud music on the Team frequency didn't help.
Approximately fifty gliders arrived back home between 5:30 and 6:00 pm, and the resulting flight log uploads (or I should say "attempted uploads") took us off the internet for the rest of the day. Anticipating this, the US Team was ready with couriers to deliver memory cards to the scoring office. I'm sure that we were the only team that did not violate the Flight Documentation Interval.
No scores have been published. In fact, nothing at all has been published in the results section of the contest website so far.
Two more practice days, then a day off, and then the show begins.
*These are the official FAI terms. I'll try to publish a glossary soon.
**Yes, we are metric here. Get used to it.
The weather forecast was 2-3 m/sec to 2000 meters**, with few Cu. They called Racing Tasks* in all three classes, with moderate distances and three or four turnpoints. The World Class was first off, and by half an hour after their last launch we were beginning to wonder if we missed the call to open the Task. Bill and Tom, who are here to practice, not to hang around waiting for us groundlings to sort things out, elected to head out on course. I couldn't get a definitive answer about whether the Task was open, so I told the Team to consider the Task to be open in all classes. That trick works only on practice days, of course. The Organisers promised to do a better job tomorrow.
All five of our pilots had good flights (Sarah chose to rest one more day). Sean made it around without his partner, enduring a double battery failure on the final leg. Bill cut the corner after two turnpoints in order to be home to work on the glider. Tom caught the French team at the first turn and escorted them the rest of the way. Phil and Peter both finished their Task, but had a bit of trouble staying together. The loud music on the Team frequency didn't help.
Approximately fifty gliders arrived back home between 5:30 and 6:00 pm, and the resulting flight log uploads (or I should say "attempted uploads") took us off the internet for the rest of the day. Anticipating this, the US Team was ready with couriers to deliver memory cards to the scoring office. I'm sure that we were the only team that did not violate the Flight Documentation Interval.
No scores have been published. In fact, nothing at all has been published in the results section of the contest website so far.
Two more practice days, then a day off, and then the show begins.
*These are the official FAI terms. I'll try to publish a glossary soon.
**Yes, we are metric here. Get used to it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
In the air at last
The other five pilots caught up with Phil and made their first flights today. Now we know exactly what mechanical challenges remain. Sean found out that his wheel brake needs some attention, and Bill thinks he may have a small rigging asymmetry. Sarah, Tom, and Peter have only a few very minor issues.
We had a Team cookout at the estancia where the Standard Class contingent is housed, about 15 km north of here. It was a nice opportunity to get off the airfield for the rest of us.
We expect to be ready to fly on all three of the remaining practice days.
Here is a delayed report --
we are still learning how to deal with the local internet access
conditions. You may have heard all this already…
Day one on-site went well. PG completed registration and inspection, then made a practice flight in locally good weather. Conditions on the ground however are difficult. There continues to be much rain, and there are many soft & muddy areas to deal with. The end of runway 31 is at present occupied by a large lake so that it seems unlikely that runway 13 will be available in its full length anytime soon.
New Years Eve: after overnight thunderstorms again, flying
has been cancelled due to crosswinds. Trees limbs are falling in the camping
area, but this failed to prevent a fine celebration of the advent of the new
year.
New Years Day: flying may be possible later in the day,
dependent perhaps on the recovery rate of the tow pilots from the aforementioned
celebration.
We opened up our container at the terminal in Zarate.
Everything arrived just as we dispatched it. We had the trailers back in a
roadworthy condition and the vehicles loaded after a few hours work.
 |
| Zarate terminal operations |
We made friends at the local gliding club (Condor) and were
able to park our equipment there overnight before making an early start for the
contest site the next day.
 |
| At the gliding club in Zarate |
We are being greatly assisted by the Argentinean gliding
team. Santiago Berca is providing PG with a vehicle for the duration of the
event, and met us at the airport. This made for a long wait for him as the
flight arrived fours late. Santiago is competing at Chaves in the club class,
and also flew in 15 in the recent WGC in Uvalde – two world championships in
just a few months!
 |
| John & Peter could write a PhD on wiring up this truck |
Day one on-site went well. PG completed registration and inspection, then made a practice flight in locally good weather. Conditions on the ground however are difficult. There continues to be much rain, and there are many soft & muddy areas to deal with. The end of runway 31 is at present occupied by a large lake so that it seems unlikely that runway 13 will be available in its full length anytime soon.
A snapshot from the air -- rather too much water on the runways:
First report of the year
New Year's Day is a serious holiday here. Tom and Mimi had to make a special appointment to be let into their hotel last night. The town is completely shuttered this morning.
Originally, this was to be a no-fly day, but we've had so little practice that the Organisers acceded to the Teams' request to provide tows today. The Scoring office joined the campaign to allow flying; they are desperate for flight logs.
There will be no Task.
Originally, this was to be a no-fly day, but we've had so little practice that the Organisers acceded to the Teams' request to provide tows today. The Scoring office joined the campaign to allow flying; they are desperate for flight logs.
There will be no Task.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Everything has a name
Sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the official names, so here they are.
The town is called Adolfo Gonzales Chaves, which everyone calls "Chaves" for short.
The contest itself is named in honor of Rolf Hossinger, the 1960 World Champion.
 |
| Rolf Hossinger, 1960 |
The host club is the Club de Planeadores Otto Ballod, named after the aviation pioneer who established gliding in Argentina. The club has been flying gliders here since 1931.
 |
| Otto Ballod, 1925 |
Light lunch
Peter wasn't all that hungry, so he ordered the "light lunch," which turned out to be a ham-cheese-veal-egg sunny side up-full salad sandwich.
I didn't stick around to watch him eat it.
Blowin' Forty
Today was a bit of a dud.
At Briefing, they told us we could expect a late afternoon Task, but it was not to be. The wind strength increased all day, until it became obvious to all that there would be no flying. Gliders were disassembled, hangared or hidden in the campground, where you could hear discussion in many languages about the likelihood of a tree falling on a glider (or a campsite, for that matter!)
It will be windy all night, and the pessimists think that we'll lose tomorrow also. The optimists are saying that we'll be able to fly tomorrow, and that all this wind will help dry the runway. The weatherman, who is neither a pessimist or an optimist, cannot be found.
Our pilots, crews, and sailplanes are all ready. Crews are instructed to send their pilots to bed shortly after midnight.
Happy New Year!
At Briefing, they told us we could expect a late afternoon Task, but it was not to be. The wind strength increased all day, until it became obvious to all that there would be no flying. Gliders were disassembled, hangared or hidden in the campground, where you could hear discussion in many languages about the likelihood of a tree falling on a glider (or a campsite, for that matter!)
It will be windy all night, and the pessimists think that we'll lose tomorrow also. The optimists are saying that we'll be able to fly tomorrow, and that all this wind will help dry the runway. The weatherman, who is neither a pessimist or an optimist, cannot be found.
Our pilots, crews, and sailplanes are all ready. Crews are instructed to send their pilots to bed shortly after midnight.
Happy New Year!
SPOT Tracking
Follow the US Team in real time via SPOT Tracking. There are several versions available; try all of them and see what you like the best:
Google Maps
Google Maps (Large)
Mobile
Google Earth KML
Reminder: takeoffs occur approximately 1630 UTC and landings approximately 2130 UTC.
Thanks to Mark Hawkins and Frank Paynter for setting this up.
Google Maps
Google Maps (Large)
Mobile
Google Earth KML
Reminder: takeoffs occur approximately 1630 UTC and landings approximately 2130 UTC.
Thanks to Mark Hawkins and Frank Paynter for setting this up.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Much fettling, some flying
Phil made the Team's first practice flight today and reported 6 knots to 5000 feet. Everyone else stayed on the ground working on their gliders. Peter came close to flying, but decided to take it easy one more day. Sarah, Sean, Tom, and Bill worked on instruments all day, and are close to ready. We're hoping that everyone will fly tomorrow.
The crews worked hard all day establishing our presence on the field, shopping, programming mobile phones, exchanging currency, and raising the Stars and Stripes over our base camp. We are getting a lot of help from the friends we met at Uvalde in August.
They will call a Task tomorrow at the 1130 (1430 UTC) Briefing.
The crews worked hard all day establishing our presence on the field, shopping, programming mobile phones, exchanging currency, and raising the Stars and Stripes over our base camp. We are getting a lot of help from the friends we met at Uvalde in August.
They will call a Task tomorrow at the 1130 (1430 UTC) Briefing.
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