December 23 - Day 4

Good Evening Race Fans:


Today was another race day for the GP pilots here at Omarama. After issuing an A & B, then a C & D, then an F task we were able to go racing. I joked that the F task meant we were all F'd - funny that the joke was on me.


I hope I gave all the fans of the Stars and Stripes a bit of an adrenaline rush as I drove the Ventus C hard on down the course out of the start line. For the first two legs I was going pretty well and hanging with all the top dogs. Then the long cross-wind traverse to the third turnpoint in the Grampian Mountains (to the East-Northeast of Omarama) got the better of me after I lost sight of basically everyone in the field.



Day Winner Bruce Taylor (2nd from left) with Uli Schwenck and Giorgio Galetto. (Tim Timoshenko (our Russian crew friend) is on the far left.

Left to my own devices, I was looking at running a convergence line north and then getting on another to cross the Mackenzie Basin to the turnpoint. Had it worked, it would have caught me up with the leaders - or so I thought at the time.


Not known to me at the time, Uli Schwenk had gotten out to a 25 km (!) lead on the hard-driving Aussie Bruce Taylor and Sebastian Kawa in the Diana 2. However he did this by ridge soaring (!) the entire way from the second turn Tomsons to the eastern shores of Lake Benmore (!!!) For anyone who has flown here, the wind was a strong northerly. The ridges do not really line up, but somehow Uli made it work until he was stuck for a long while.


Uli Schwenck ended up 2nd on the day. The day winners were 1) Bruce Taylor (AUS), 2) Uli Schwenck, (GER) and 3) Ben Flewett (NZL). This brings us to the overall leaders of 1) Ben Flewett (25 Points), 2) Steve Jones (GBR)(24 points), and 3) Uli Schwenck (23 Points)

My personal flying day went from really good to really slow in about 20 minutes. Once I realized I had lost sight of the leaders, I saw a few guys down on the ridges going into the helicopter-only retrieve valley at the base of the St.Bathans range. After the loss of Herbert Weiss two days ago, I decided the better part of valor was to stay safe and to not go for broke low down on the ridges. Well the staying safe part was held partly true, but the thermals just did not work well for me after that decision. I basically ended up stuck on the local mountain Little Ben and then having to ridge fly my way up to the peak of Big Ben, just eat of the field, transition into pathetic thermals and then tiptoe out into the Mackenzie basin in search of lift under some very ragged looking cu’s. Me and Vladimir Panafutin (RUS) in our old ships (Ventus C and LS-6c) just did not have the performance for the drag race today. We met up going into the Grampian turn, but my heart was just not in it at that point in time and I let him get away to finish ahead of me. No points for 18th place.

So basically, after the brilliance of the first 1/3 of the flight, and the desperation of the middle 1/3 of the flight, the last 1/3 of the flight, while not easy, was just focused on getting home in one piece. As the lead 9 gliders blew past me coming out of the Grampian turnpoint, I figured I should just slow down. Once the lead 9 gliders are home, there are no points under this GP Format. It is harsh, but in the scoring my pathetic 95 kph was worth just as much as Giorgio Galetto’s11-something something kph– exactly 0 points.

It would sure have been nice to be able to find and ASW-27 or Ventus 2ax to fly in this comp. The GP Start (all gliders together at one time), does really show the difference in performance of the older vs. newer ships, and even between the new ships and the other new ships. When you start together, a Ventus or LS-6 are going to have to take just a few more climbs of x-meters, when put up against a new ship, to get around the same course. When the time comes to top of the tank, the newer ships , in the hands of superior pilots, have the opening to squirt away from the older ships. Given that all 18 ships are being flown by very proficient pilots, it is no wonder my Ventus C comes up just a bit short.

In the race between the ASW-27, the Ventus 2ax/bx, and the Diana 2, I would have to give the advantage to the small fuselage Schempp-Hirth product. Most of the pilots were flying these, and were it not for Ben Flewett’s local knowledge, the Ventus 2 would have shown its superior speed in the hands of these world class pilots. If we get in a fifth day tomorrow, then maybe the V2’s can take the title. The Diana 2 can be a spectacular machine in the right hands, but investing in one is a game for very wealthy racers as it will never be a “fun flying” ship for the local club pilot.

IMHO, given the desire of the GP Organizers and the FAI to have this media friendly format that really tests and shows-off pilot skill, GP races should be ideally run as one design events like in Nascar with their Car of Tomorrow (COT). By that I mean all Ventus 2, or all ASW-27, or Standard Cirrus’s for that matter. Only when all ships are relatively equal, will the regatta start of the GP and subsequent racing truly be the measure of the pilot.

Maybe this is the opening for a truly successful one design class (i.e. World Class) to emerge from the disaster of the current World Class. Maybe if we could get Schleicher and Schempp-Hirth, and DG (or whoever else is interested) to compete to be the sole designer/supplier of a “new” world class glider for both a new world class at the WGC’s and single design GP events, will GP pilots truly be equal when a GP race starts.

I’ll get off my soap box now.

Tomorrow is the last day of the officially sanctioned GP World Championship. We have 4 of 5 days in the bag and that makes an official contest under GP Rules. Hopefully we will get a fifth day of racing in to close out these championships.

The outlook is for the front that dogged me with overcast as I fell behind the field today, to pull through sometime in the late morning tomorrow. The rate and degree of clearing that we see will determine if we get in this last contest day. Should it clear by noontime, we might be treated to a wave task. But if the forecast of the clearing is off by just three hours later in the day, then the contest will be over.

See Ya! Tim/TM



South Africans Oscar and Mark

Me with Marc and Rod, friends from Southern Soaring