Bar Talk

Today I’ve got some notes on a few things that have been popular in bar talk, during the comp so far.

Flarms are not mandatory here and many people believe that they may have prevented the mid air on Day 1. The organisers and the German team have offered spares to all pilots.

On the day of the fatal accident Alan turned his phone on when he heard Pete relaying the accident, in case we needed to contact him. After an hour or so he received a text. He checked it and found a “Welcome to the Czech Republic” message, since he had crossed the border on task.

QNH as usual is a huge issue. For whatever reason the organisers are issuing a daily QNH to calculate altitude rather than letting the scoring program calculate the actual QNH based on take off altitude. On Saturday for the first time it was correct, but until then it has been incorrect by 3, 4 or even 5mb. This has caused much arm waving, calculating, and creating of spread sheets to calculate the scoring altitude error - which is different from the measured altitude.

The second aspect of this issue is that they have set, and are enforcing, a minimum 50m QNH finish height at the 3km finish ring. So each day we also have to calculate a finish altitude based on the issued QNH, compared to the actual QNH.

Thirdly it is possible to land 3km away and receive a valid finish, as Sebastian did on Day 3, but they still insist on a 50m finish height. So Sebastian received a warning.

If you had 50m at 3km you would come back to the airfield……..

The chief steward berated the pilots at the briefing listing, a mid air, a fatality, a gaggle touch, and numerous outlanding incidents. He says it is the worst competition for safety that he has ever been to.

The outlanding issue is made worse due to the late rains, causing a late harvest, leaving nowhere to land. Most paddocks have a mature crop or haystacks in them. Pete says the options here at the moment are far worse than in Italy or France. Consequently every day there are at least half a dozen gliders being worked on over night in the factory. Without the factory at least a dozen gliders would be out of the competition already.

Some cynics claim that the task setter has shares in the workshop.

As I was typing this Pete called in his outlanding so I now have a photo to demonstrate what a typical outlanding paddock looks like in Slovakia.

Pete’s closest midair incident so far was on day 3 when he encountered a gaggle on the start line as he was trying to start. Tobi had a close run with several gliders on day 3 when all classes had the same out and return task and he had gliders flying straight at him at cloud base, if not a little higher.

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