Pribina Sailplane Grand Prix 2008
Sailplane Grand Prix Quallification
September 7-13 2008 NITRA, SLOVAKIA

Competition - 11th Sep 2008

2008-09-11 23:36:40

We have got interesting day today. The morning was dark with complete cloud cover. All were lazy to do their job. Pilots to get planes to the grid and orgainser to make the task. Despite this in the end all has been managed well and at 10 o'clock briefing task has been ready and pilots keen on to move gliders to the runway. The first task was 170km long and set with hope that sky will clear around 13:00. This has not happen and the delay has been necessarily afterwards. With that regard the task has been changed to B version which was some 20km shorter. All this has been announced at second briefing held at 13:30. The new time for launches was set to 14:00. With 15 minutes delay the launches began at 14:15. After the openning of the start line the sky was not looking so optimistic, because there have been only few cloud to the south under the cloud cover. Anyway pilots managed to stay airborne there and were able to fly around Nitra to the two turn points located north of us. Few pilots decided not to fly this leg via better looking area in Nitra, but flew straight to the point Zlate Moravce. In the end they were a bit earlier at that point. Unfortunately for them the others managed to climb well behing and overtook them already in the vicinity of Partizanske. Exciting drama for all of us on the ground watching the online tracking. The first glider on final glide home was Rasmus (71) with his borrowed LS10. He has been well in advance of the two others Petr (PX) a Andy (WO) who were fighting for the second place. It looked that Andy would overtake Petr, but Petr used his experience form GP events and came second to the finish before Andy. This situation is well documented in the photo section of the web page. The surprise for all of us was that all leading pilots in overal score except Petr (PX) have landed out or used their engines. This brought the overall leadership to Petr (PX). It going to be an exciting end of the event, because several pilots could become winners of the race week. CU tomorrow.

2008-09-11 00:02:15

The 4th flying day. The weather in the morning was similar to the yesterday. No clouds and a bit cold. Gridding started at 09:00 and some gliders were there shortly after that time. At 10 o'clock briefing the task was set and weather explained as other days before. The first intention was to take of at 12:00, but that was shortly changed to 13:00 and 13:30 later. The last time was the actual time for launches. There was little doubt if the task is not too long, but this has been withdrawn soon after pilots departed. On the online tracking we were able to see that speeds are good enough to allow finishing of the task in a reasonable time. During the flight pilots had to fight with blue thermals in the beginning and bubble thermals later during the day. In the end we have seen well separated arrivals with a new winner CZ (Ivan) comming home before BO (Olli) who took third time second place. Those two gliders were followed by other shotly after. Olli has taken the lead in overal score and overtook Sebastian who had not so good day. Ivan jumped to position number three in overal scores thanks to his today's win. We all hope for very competitive tomorrow.