July 30

The second official practice day of the 30th World Gliding Championships was a rather quiet one. A weak cold front marched westward into eastern Germany last night, bringing low cloud and just a touch of rain. At the morning pilot briefing the weatherman held out some hope for late-afternoon flying, but after several days of excellent soaring weather few pilots seemed interested and at 2:30 pm the day’s task was canceled. Naturally, skies began to clear about then, and by 4:00 it was sunny with even a few cumulus clouds. But very few launches were seen – it was by general consensus a day for fettling rather than flying.

Nor did we have anything to match the excitement of yesterday’s field fire. The same combine was at work harvesting wheat just northwest of the airfield, this time without complications. One type of beer available locally is “Weissbier”, made from wheat. Most such are light, but a few are dark; we reckoned that the burned field could possibly contribute a very dark variety.

Perhaps 60% of the registered pilots chose to fly yesterday’s turn-area task. Winning speeds were close to my prediction of 130 kph. No one puts a great deal of stock in practice task results, but it was certainly a good day for the Brits (easily the most successful country in recent international soaring competition), who were first in all three classes. Team USA did well, with a third in Open class, third in 18-Meter class and sixth in 15-Meter class.

We also had one of the only landouts: Karl Striedieck found a hole on the final leg and landed (in a typically excellent field) about 50 km southeast of home. He caused a bit of fuss for the local police, who calmed down (and were actually quite helpful) when given the explanation for the “plane crash” – apparently, eastern Germany is a bit less used to soaring than the western areas.

As most who follow international soaring competition know, this is the first year that Standard class is not competing alongside the flapped classes (15-Meter, 18-Meter and Open). The non-flapped World Championships were held in Rieti, Italy a few weeks ago. There is some sense that this is a demotion for Standard class. Many pilots wonder about the future of classes and the plans of the often inscrutable IGC (International Gliding Commission). It seems to be a common belief that one or more classes are in line for extermination by The Powers That Be. One might well be the World Class, which has never achieved a strong level of participation. Another is thought to be either 15-Meter or Standard class; the 15-Meter class is believed by some to be the more likely, since its performance is reasonably close to that of the burgeoning 18-Meter class. Others say that the neck of the Standard class is on the block, and point to its exile from this contest as evidence.

It’s significant that the newest class – 18-Meter – is also the one with the most entries here. Despite a non-trivial increment in cost, it appears that pilots are forsaking 50-foot wingspans in favor of 60 feet. Doug Jacobs and I were just a few days ago at the factory taking delivery of his new 18-Meter Ventus 2cxa; we were told that Schempp-Hirth is building gliders about as fast as they can, and that almost all of them are capable of wingspans of 18 meters or more.

Part of the reason is the popularity of stow-away engines (both self-launching & sustainers) and the fact that the weight of an engine is much more easily borne by 18 meters of wing. Another factor is certainly improvements in handling. As I learned in a flight with Doug from the Hahnweide to the Black Forest and back (in a superb Ventus loaned by Biggo Berger), a modern 18-meter glider is a very attractive combination of Open-class performance of just a few years ago combined with 15-meter handling. I’d recommend you NOT fly one of these gliders unless you can afford to write a rather big check (as you’ll almost certainly be tempted to do shortly after landing).

That leads to the topic of the dollar-euro exchange rate, which is really quite savage just now. At 1:1, things would be a serious bargain in Europe; $1.15 - 1.20 to the euro would make things about even. But the current rate is around $1.58, which is vicious. Consider that at Lüsse a tow to around 2000’ costs 50 euro, which equates to $79 (!). The only sensible response is to ignore the brutal cost and simply enjoy the chance to be here.

July 29

It’s the first official practice day at the 30th World Gliding Championships. The site is Lüsse Germany, about 60 kilometers southwest of Berlin. Lüsse can contend with Omarama, New Zealand (home of WGC 1995) for the title of smallest municipality ever to give its name to a world championship contest. But the comparison isn’t quite valid, for just 5 km east is Belzig, a bustling town offering hardware stores, restaurants, supermarkets and beer outlets – just the sorts of establishments that glider pilots preparing for a 14-day contest find essential.

Lüsse lies well within the territory that 19 years ago was East Germany. And the presence of the contest here is in part related to that, for this airfield began its life as an auxiliary base catering to Soviet MIG fighters. A paved runway would have been extravagant for occasional use, but if a MIG is to land on grass, it had better be growing on a hard, well-drained surface. And it should be wide and really long – say, 3400 meters (around 11,000 feet) by 350 meters. Thus the world’s best glider pilots will be flying from one of the world’s largest unpaved airfields.

They will be sent on tasks in an area that is reasonably flat and rather “generic” in character – local knowledge of the terrain and its soaring characteristics is thought to be less important here than at most recent WGC sites (and dramatically less than at mountain sites such as Rieti, in Italy). The task area is eminently landable – East German agricultural fields tend to be huge and plentiful. The task area extends east into Poland, but its generous character changes little there.

If the weather continues as it has been since the arrival of the US Team on Saturday, the large and friendly fields will see limited business from gliders. We’ve had clear and cool mornings, with afternoon high temperatures above 90 degrees. The soaring has been excellent – lift has been 5 to 7 knots under sparse and honest cumulus clouds with bases to 7500’. With ground elevations mostly below 500’ (the airfield is at 217’), this is definitely “cracking good” soaring. Thermals have been typically small and hard to center, but these are conditions that would produce winning speeds around 130 kph (80 mph).

As is inevitable in Europe, airspace is an issue here. Lüsse lies just outside the outermost extent of Berlin airspace, and so the first leg of a task cannot be on any heading northwest clockwise through southeast. Indeed, Berlin takes a hefty chunk out of the contest area, though it would be possible for a task to circumnavigate Berlin airspace - and some pilots chose to fly this route yesterday (the minimum distance would probably be about 500 km). Other cities with significant airspace restrictions are Leipzig (85 km south-southwest), Dresden (140 km south-southeast) and Magdeburg (70 km west). So it’s not really a question whether airspace penalties will be earned, but rather by whom.

The US Team here comprises 7 pilots in six gliders (including an ASH-25, with two aboard). I will give full details in an upcoming report. For now I’ll note that all personnel have arrived, most have shed their jet lag, preparations seem to be going well, and the number of equipment issues yet to be resolved is agreeably low for this stage in the cycle of a contest.

As is typical on the first official practice day, the contest organization has some rough spots yet to be smoothed. By no means all entrants are present and flying, but today’s launch took two hours, so it’s clear that both the number of tow planes present and the launch procedures in use are not what they might be. Trailer parking has been largely organized on the do-it-yourself plan, for which even hardened WGC veterans can recall little precedent. This has inevitably led to crowding near the favored locations, some strife, and a general sense of “not ready for prime time”. It seems curious that at such a huge airfield we may be facing trailer and glider parking problems as significant as those at WGC 2006 in Eskilstuna, Sweden, an airfield with no more than a third the space of this one.

As against these complications (which to be fair tend to abound at this stage of a world contest) I should note that this morning’s pilot briefing was thorough and efficient, the English-language skills of all presenters were excellent, provisions for waterballast (often a very troublesome detail) are all a crewperson could wish, and both the food and the beer sold on the airfield are well above average.

This afternoon we had some unlooked-for excitement in the form of a grass fire in the large (perhaps 50-acre) wheat field adjacent to the airport. This field has appeared dry and due for harvest since we arrived, and indeed this morning we saw a combine at work there. The perimeter of the field was cut first, which proved fortunate. At about 3 pm a fire (possibly caused by the combine itself) started at the east end of the field and driven by 15-knot southeast winds soon had much of the field in flames, which made a fearsome noise and put out a giant pall of black smoke.

Had the edge of the field not been cut or had the wind shifted to northeast it’s likely the flames would have jumped onto the airfield, where the first targets would have been the east campground (full of tents) and the area that contains the team headquarter huts. As is normally the case, fire trucks showed up just a bit late to have much effect on the progress of the fire (which at its worst was far beyond any real control) but they did manage to make some noise and to add to the excitement. As I write this, firemen are spraying water at the edge of the field to ensure that nothing re-kindles. Traffic is barred from the only road leading off the airfield, but things should soon be back to normal. Pilots will now have a 50-acre black smudge as an airfield landmark.