Sunday, December 2, 2007

Final Preparations

Good Evening Race Fans:

As the days tick down to zero before I hop on the plane for New Zealand, I wanted to write up a quick report of what is going on with Team EY (soon to be Team TM in Omarama).

My eyes are pretty bleary from day after day of looking at Google Earth, practice flying on the flight simulator, playing OLC flights, and going over and marking up good old fashioned paper maps. Oh, then add in an 8 month old baby and you probably get the picture of how tired I am right now.

This contest, although a World Championship with most of the A-list pilots present, will come as a relief in that pretty much all I will have to do is concentrate on flying fast. That is the beauty of going to a worlds - while stressful, all the worries associated with everyday life get to take a back seat to gliding for between two and four weeks. Life as it should be :-)

While the flying out of Omarama, especially on any wave days, will be a little intimidating at first, I already feel like I have a good grasp of the task area. Now how the task area works on any specific day (???), that's where the on-site practicing will have to bring me up to speed with how things really work. Glide Omarama is already psting some good kilometers to the OLC, so the soaring is looking to be perking up just in time. Take a look at some of the flights they are posting and you can see just how convoluted the terrain is on the South Island

I will be spending two or three days in a Duo with local familiarisation flights, then getting into whatever single seater is available for 3-4 days to get in some practice. Then off we go with two days of official practice, six days of GP competition in Omarama, then Christmas Break, then two days of flying (GP makeup days or Sprint races for the Crowds) in Wanaka in the New Zealand Air Games.

News from Omarama is that all three containers shipped from England and Germany were delivered to Omarama Airfield in the middle of this past week. Hopefully all the gliders survived the trip intact and will be ready to go flying immediately. There are a couple of the German GP pilots on the field, but so far none of the other GP pilots has arrived on site.

Lastly and very importantly, you can see on my website www.echoyankee.com that Team EY has been lucky enough to add three sponsors to its fanbase. They are:

- Marfa Gliders in Marfa Texas,
- The U.S. Southwest Soaring Museum in Moriarty, New Mexico, and
- The National Soaring Museum in Harris Hill, New York.

All three are TERRIFIC operations and not to be missed by anyone passing through their respective neighborhoods. Oh heck, why not just go ahead and plan a special trip to see each of them, you won't regret it!

We are still looking for more interested sponsors (inidividuals, businesses, etc.) to help offset the very expensive venture of international glider racing without US Team support, but these three have already been a great help towards getting me competing in New Zealand. Thank You!

That's it for now.

See Ya, EY

3 comments:

Dan said...

I'll be following this blog with interest from the other side of the world - the United Kingdom! Looking forwards to the GP and the online coverage - will be very exciting.

Good luck!

Tim McAllister said...

Thanks!
Tim

Anonymous said...

Great gliding to you, coach. I am looking forward to the online coverage also.We'll be rooting for you from Portland, Oregon.