Race Day 3 - Great Racing, but uncertainty...

Good Evening Race Fans:

I'll keep this short and sweet. Omarama came through with another day of racing in strong, yet tough weather conditions. TM raised its head from the cellar with a run to 11th place on the day - but still out of the points and at the bottom of the overall score sheet. This scoring system, with this caliber of pilots, is brutal to say the least.

After getting on final glide at the last turnpoint and running with Uli Schwenk in a Ventus 2ax for the entire run - I can definitely say that a Ventus 1 is jsut that much worse than a Ventus 2ax. I started out about 400 feet higher than him, but he beat me by a little less than 2 minutes. Oh well! Winners on the day were: 1) Kiessling, 2) Sommer, 3) Galetto, 4) Kawa. Overall it stands: 1) Jones, 2) Flewett, 3) Kawa

Much more troubling was the news that one of our pilots went missing going into the 2nd turn, #075 - Siberia. His tracking device went out - as many of them have done off and on - but after an initial period there were calls to GP Pilots asking if they could report anything gone awry in the area. To my knowledge no GP pilot was able to see anything. Search planes were sent into the area in the early evening hours and an SAR (Search and Rescue) helicopter was waiting on the pad for news of any discovery. By early evening the aircraft had been located. The pilots and soaring community here in Omarama have been asked to refrain from reporting anything before official word is received of the status of the pilot. By sundown the news was "nothing good".

Please say a prayer and stay safe out there.

See ya! Tim/TM