Zbraslavice

Our upgraded judging position, patent pending...
Gaffa-Blondie and me! ;)

Traditional Hello to Germany.... You know who ;-)

On the way to briefing tent for dinner.....

Photo - bomb - Kari, Mr Jury member 

Dinner turned out as germ....  No, Maxu-night. He is moving to power so no more Glider contests....

Movable bank, Nordea, isn't it time in Finland too??? 

On a visit to Kutna Hora... Excellent self made lemonade. I mean with real lemons! Delicious!

beautiful buildings of Kutna Hora

Visited this St. Barbara Cathedral. Construction began in 1388! Beautiful!

St. Barbara Cathedral. It is one of the most famous Gothic churches in central Europe and it is a UNESCO world heritage site. http://www.kutnahora.cz/index.php?sec=3&cid=61

On the roof of Chapel of Corpus Christi

http://www.kutnahora.cz/index.php?sec=3&cid=67

These City-maps were found around the city of Kutna Hora. Quite handy, I must say!

View from the Cathedral!

Few photos from inside the Cathedral. I am not very religious person, but these are always interesting, beautiful, peaceful and quiet places which I like to visit. A lot of history inside these walls....

And a visit to a local restaurant for some refreshments....

Ever so lovely Swiss-team (or part of it) and Kari, mr. Jury member.

We finnished all 5 rounds of flights in time, even friday was eventually cancelled due heavy winds. so last flights were flown on saturday morning. After some airshow, it was time for some medals and dinner.

Congratulations to all winners!!!

Now I am home, second round of laundry getting ready and tomorrow it is time to pack again and head to France... One more competition to go!

travelling with the Young Padawan

Like I wrote earlier, I am on this trip with my daughter - she is in the big contest for the first time.Here wer are starting the journey, quite early on the morning, in train heading to Helsinki Airport

We had a long stop and change of plane in Copenhage, so we took the metro to City, had lunch in some restaurant. Then we still had several hours to spend, so decided to go to Kastrup and visit the Blå Planet Aquarium

there was a quite nice view to the sea and also very wide selection of fish tanks so if you like that kind of things, that sure is a value for money.

Huge stingrays

this became the absolutely favourite soda for both of us, now just waiting for it to arrive to Finland. And if someone knows where to get it, please let me know :D

then the evening flight to Prague.

I guess it was a bit nervous to go to a contest for 2 weeks and speak nothing but English with (mostly) people who she has never met and work there as a runner. And the weather.... rather hot I would say....

Airfield seems to be quite nice and comfortable but as the rest of the central Europe, very hot and dry.... This contest has the biggest number of competitors, total of 47 advanced pilots and 43 unlimited, total of 79 glider pilots. Impressive!

few shots from opening ceremonies...

Always friendly and lovely Swiss team!

Our FIN-CZE judging team, as in me and my assistant Katka. No language barriers, works like a charm!

The hotel is called Hubert, meaning of a hunter... well, I'd say there is quite a lot of stuffed animals around here...

the airfield has its own pool, which I must say is quite attractive and a good idea in this weather.

Our little Sahara...

Sunday evening we had already both adv and unl knowns and frees flown, adv unknown compulsory and we had started the unlimited unknowns when these clouds started to build up. After about an hour we stoppedflying and there was.... well....

rather heavy rain. With hail. And thunder. Didn't last long tho...

But after these, no more flying...

So far so good.....

see the sequence, feel the sequence, be the sequence....

Contest in Deva, Romania is over and we are already almost a week done with the one in Zbrazlavice, Czech Republic. The closing ceremonies in Romania were held in extremely hot weather, and soon after I had to head to Bukarest for my flight back home. Must say, travelling a night and day is extremely exhausting. Good thing was, that my ride knew a nice Italian restaurant in Pitesti where we stopped by for a Dinner and honestly, if you are ever around, visit La Dolce Vita. Very good, Very Italian. Oh, and the coffee they had.... <3

I got back home sunday afternoon, unpacked my stuff, repacked my gear, packed the kids gear and early monday morning we headed to Zbraslavice via Copenhagen. This is kind of a special case, since my daughter is with me this time for the first time...

Finally got to the hotel in the evening. On Tuesday morning we had the judges briefing and afternoon we took few test flights in the practical part of the judges seminar.

Contest started on Tuesday morning and now it is already Saturday and we have now flown both advanced and unlimited knowns and frees. During the day we need to take a break from flying, since it is getting really hot in here and it just doesn't make any sense... Today (saturday) we started the first unknown and the total flights flown today were 54 + warm up flights. So that was quite a many, considering we had 2 hour break during the day. It would be normal, but the weather is rather extreme, with high temperatures....

yesterday we also had an extra briefing because of these rumours about Fox. According to this rumour, the Fox would be grounded because of an accident in Germany. A call was made to Marganski and there was an "incident" in Germany during an aerobatic flight with a passanger, where the stick got loose. In anycase the pilot had about 2 minutes to teach the passanger how to land a fox. And succeeded well. The pilots are ok and plane is still useable.
Anyway, there might be a bulleting coming up and because of this, all planes will be checked accordingly.

Now back to bed, briefing at 8am.

Smoking Hot

To add to my list "first time for everything", we had to stop the contest one of the days because of fire. Some local farmers had been burning their fields (Not leagal, but commonly accepted procedure here to get the soil better), and it got a bit out of hands.
Anyway, few photos from these 2 weeks here...

Morning briefing with Live Demo. CD explaining the ground procedures.

The twelve o'clock sheep that pass the judging line regularily. Exept one day. Then they were there at 1 o'clock.

Judges briefing, as you can see, weather is really hot. And humid...

Another one from the judging line

Opening ceremonies, march throug the city

some of the judges ready for marching

Must say, the local way of electricity is.... not something I am used to

apparently I have changed country. I got the right one too afterwards, saying *CIVA* instead of Sweden. But then again, PIK as President of Jury was Swiss, which in Neutral. That means, I must be Nato. And the  third one is Hungary. Or Hungry.... (Actually, Tamas had a batch with CIVA in the beginning, but it said "Principal Jury" instead of just Jury.... :D )

There are nice plum trees in the back of the judging line. Yummy! :)

One of the days, it was so smoking hot, there was a fire. We had to evacuate the corner judge from his position and stop flying untill the fire brigade got the fire under control.

the ATC tried to draw the box for us in the sky.... :D

Member Abraniy had a birthday, so of course there was a cake. And I think we managed to surprice him with that :D

One of the jury duties was to observe the line judges at work. Must say, that is HOT place to be, in the crop circles. VERY hot...

We also had a Romanian night on wednesday, where some history was present. I thought at first that they released the Game of Thrones....

This pretty much sums up the 2 weeks here ;)