The Green Room

Gary and I were invited to appear on the ITV regional news programme Calendar which went out at 6pm tonight to talk about the Team GB result in Texas – All good publicity for the sport!

You can watch the clip HERE (fast forward to 15:48 to find us).




Theme Song of the 2007 Worlds - CLICK

more random pics from St Andre

All pictures have been made smaller to speed the upload process!

Justin & Judith
Phippsy
Ground Gaggle
Doris in the shade of my trusty ride
Dave and Jo - shame about the finger!
Gordon - landing at Thorame-Basse
Bruce and Dave
A generation gap or 2?
Our home in the South of France
Mr B
Steve G
Cutie
Johnny & Will

Holiday?

Have I really just had a ‘holiday’ ~ Or were my testicals just not big enough?

 

The conditions in St Andre were the roughest air I have ever flown in!! Because of the cock-up with my instrument on the first day coupled with the conditions I soon found myself in unfamiliar territory ~ ‘holiday mode’ and enjoyed lazing by the lake with Caroline, driving to the coast to people/posh boat watch and flying on the better days, often being one of the last to take off.

Posh Boat at Villefranche-sur-mer

We also had a great night out at the party at Mark and Helen’s house.





I felt very uncomfortable with the conditions and its my personal opinion that competitions should not be flown in conditions such as we experienced (show respect for the mountains), hopefully we are past the days of the ‘old league’ where the size of your manhood was determined by what conditions you could fly in! I am certainly older and wiser.

There were people who thought the conditions were ok – perhaps they were lucky and found good air for the duration of their flight or perhaps they were just ignorant of the conditions – no doubt my thoughts will cause controversy?

Universal Language

I’m pleased to say that the Roger Daltrey of hang gliding, Ron Richardson survived throwing his ‘chute (and landing in trees) with minor bruising. Spanish pilot Pedro Garcia Morelle also threw his ‘chute in rough air and was ok. Sam H-B should recover in 1 to 3 months from breaking his neck whilst free flying on a day the task was cancelled (apparently conditions were really good but for some reason Sam ended up landing down wind). Sam has already decided to carry on as he loves the sport so much which is good news. I was once told to give it up by a medical "expert" who could not even diagnose what was wrong with me - I just smiled back and that was that!!

Well done to Gordon who was crowned for the 8th time as British Champion. Jacques Bott won the Rigid comp after proclaiming he had also flown in some of the roughest conditions (one day his glider tucked twice!)…….........

............Say no more, I've decided that my tesitcals were just not big enough for this comp. (I wonder if I would have felt differently if the cock-up with my instrument hadn't happened on day one?)

Gordon preparing for the last task
Grant Crossingham - in second place

Random Pics - St Andre last few days

All pictures taken with Canon Powershot G7 - you can click on any picture to make it bigger!

Final Task

Briefing!
Dave and a few of the WAGs


Top Guns
The young French Guns

George Shapland - Task 2 winner (bad landing)

Thank you to 'Meet Director', John

It's not supposed to be this way

Task 1 – 124km 3 turnpoints. Take off was fine, slightly breezy in the St Andre valley and very choppy. A lot of people struggled to get round on to Cheval Blanc round the front, me included so I decided to go the back way via Thorame-Basse. I got a climb to about 8,500ft and then snuckled up the spine and through a Col at 150ft – suddenly I had a 3,000ft ground clearance when I popped out the other side. At one point I looked back wondering why I was there. We then moved on to the Dormillouse run which is where Sailplanes were passing at 100knots. The Dormillouse is a about a 30km ridge where you never need to turn unless you hit a 10 up. The scenery and the rock strata is just incredible and I wish I had taken my camera, it can be a proper white knuckle ride and then you have to come back! I flew with Dave Matthews for most of the flight and I felt like we were old men on zimmer frames because it seemed to be taking ages to do the task.

Landing was interesting as the goal field had been called for my least favourite place (next to the lake) where it is common place for the wind to switch – which it was doing. I decided to head for another field and an angry French farmer who wasn’t too pleased I landed in his hay field! The flight was interesting, challenging and tiring.

Oh no! I hand my instrument in to Dave who is doing the scoring and he tells me “9” – “9 what?” I say – according to the scoring system my Compeo and back up MLR haven’t made the first turnpoint! This is impossible, both instruments confirm I have completed the full task and would not switch to the next turnpoint without doing the first – a bit like a TomTom works they would have said the equivalent of “turn around when possible”.

Head back to the tent gutted.

Yesterday the Compeo is checked again on a different laptop which now says I missed the turnpoint by a further distance than I did last night! What’s going on…… other pilots are now worried that their instruments will switch also. Do I have confidence in the scoring system being used? Is there something wrong with my Compeo? This should not be happening…..

Task 2 – the weather yesterday was stronger thermals and lift and lighter wind. There was certainly stronger thermals but not lighter wind it was much stronger @45km per hour plus. Where is the respect for the mountains?

After going into free fall and many, many near head on’s the free fall made my decision to go and land in a safe field. I had nearly 900ft per minute sink on the way in – not good and probably the roughest conditions I can remember ever flying in. The task was stopped and we are all scored to where we were at 1515 today. The majority of pilots I spoke to agreed with the decision.

Not a good 2 days in France so far.

Practice Day

Steve Green and I headed towards Nice on Thursday to pick up 'Doris' and Sara who both flew in to meet us. We had a very civilised time there before heading back to St Andre Les Alpes and the luxury of our tents.
Got the glider put back together and I had an hour or so on Friday punting around St Andre and up the Allos Valley and back – it was so cold, thought I was going to get frost bite at 9,000ft which was cloud base. My Summer ‘Texas’ gloves are just not adequate. The air was extremely clear and the view of the mountains was stunning I wish I had taken my camera with me. Its very nice doing the practice days before the comp as you can just float around in the thermals and enjoy the view…… but for some reason these days I always seem to need a purpose to fly which is quite odd – its as though I need programming before flight – I’m always look at my instruments seeing where I’m supposed to be going.

I had a rest day today and just chilled – and struggled to get over my hang over - the comp starts tomorrow.

Back in Europe

We landed back in Frankfurt a little delayed this morning due to one of the cabin crew having a heart attack which resulted in a detour to Ireland!

The flight back was good - fuelled by Margaritas and Champagne – we boarded along with the German team and as Corinna had a contact on the airline the gliders were expected, or should I say the German team gliders were expected and we tagged along.

Again I was searched leaving Dallas (Carl too) – do we look dodgy?

I’m on my way now to the South of France to meet up with Caroline and for the British Nationals Competition which starts at the weekend at St Andre Les Alpes – so far the weather is not looking good –hope it improves, we are camping!

It's Official - Brits win Team Gold

You can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger!



Back row L-R: Gary Wirdnam, Richard Lovelace, Dave Matthews, Robin Hamilton. Front row L-R: Carl Wallbank, Bruce Kavanagh


We are the proud owners of Gold medals (Robin tells me we are the first Brit team since 1991 to get Gold) - Carl and Gary were also presented with diplomas for their individual results in the top 10, well done guys.

Congratulation to Attila Bertok for winning the individual competition and to Robert Reisinger and Gerolf Heinrichs (second, and thrid). Someone told me that Attila is the first pilot in history to win both the pre-Worlds and then go on to win the World Championships!


UK Hang Gliding Competitions
Jamie's blog for more prize giving action CLICK
Official scoring at the Oz Report CLICK

Theme Song of the 2007 Worlds - CLICK

Day 10 - its not over until its over

Nothing is official until the prize giving/closing ceremony which is tonight.... but I think I can say that the Brits have won team gold!

We are busily packing our kit away so we can go and P.A.R.T.Y

(no task today due to a forecast for more rain – Erin has left us and Dean is on its way!)

Overall Team Results:
GBR 18426
FRA 18164
AUT 17947
ITA 17703
DEU 17559
AUS 17412
JPN 16166
USA 15952
BRA 15331
CZE 15101
NOR 14527
CAN 13608
ESP 12410
CHE 12201
HUN 9851
MEX 9134
SWE 8997
ISR 7809
ECU 7307
NLD 6939
COL 6857
DNK 5270
SVN 5249
NZL 2546
GTM 899

Theme Song of the 2007 Worlds - CLICK

Day 9 – Hangar 25

For those of you back home wondering what happened to Antoine – we had a manual insert waypoint and he got it wrong and missed a turnpoint! If a Frenchman doesn’t know how to use a MLR there is a problem!




Hangar 25 is the local Big Spring Air Museum where we’ve just spent a little time wandering around and keeping out of the rain. More of the same forecast for tomorrow.


Back at the Whitten Inn the weather isn't getting any better



Theme Song of the 2007 Worlds - CLICK