At the border we showed our passports. I don’t think they saw Australians at that border crossing too often, because the guard called out his female companion (both wearing big handguns) saying “Australien”. So Keith gave them both little clip on koalas. They were delighted.
Compared to Eastern Germany it was quite depressing. The buildings were not painted and everything was unkempt. We drove around for a while, found the town square, got abused for driving the wrong way up a one way street because we couldn’t understand the roadsign and were starting to think there was no-where to get dinner when we finally found a little pub.
It was quite nice inside but no-one was eating. I approached the young guy behind the counter and asked if he could speak English – Yeah – he said. Could we get a meal – yeah – could we pay in Euros – yeah. Well at this point we really weren’t sure if he could really understand us. But then he produced three menus so I guess he could.
We ordered three beers for starters and went and sat down. After a while we worked out that the menu’s were in both German and Czech. OK we couldn’t speak ether, although we were starting to understand German menus a bit. We decided “what the heck” and ordered a couple of steaks and a Schnitzel.
The meals were quite decent and the beer was lovely. The total bill was E 15.00 – less than ½ what we would pay in a pub in Germany. The bill was actually about 400 somethings but they converted it to Euros. Petrol is also cheaper there so we filled up before we went home. Still it’s a bit disconcerting to see a petro pump say 1400 somethings.
At briefing this morning, there was a handout to the pilots to help them translate between east and west German terms. Not much help to us but there was much laughter.
They must think the weather is good today because they have set both 15m and Standard Class a 504km task.
Lisa Trotter is on the front of the grid so we don’t have much time to be organised.
Lisa usually downloads the task from her Winpilot to the Volkslogger on the grid but this was taking a long time today. There was some fiddling with the cables, then the Volkslogger died completely. We did find a blown fuse in the instrument panel, but that didn’t bring the primary volkslogger back to life. The backup volkslogger was set to German and had no turnpoints in it, so Matt jumped in the car and grabbed my Volkslogger which did have all the turnpoints in it. We put the task in it and installed it in the glider. This didn’t solve the problem of Winpilot, particularly with all that airspace around. Keith has a Navman shell for his Winpilot so he lent both that and his Garmin GPS to Lisa.
All this took more time than we had, but the contest director allowed us to push off the side. Lisa finally launched at the back of the 15m Class grid.
There is a separate report describing the flying. Final speed was 89kph. Trotts had to fly a fair amount of time with the MAP, and had trouble with an undercarriage door hanging down (IGC trace). Turns had a reasonable flight (IGC trace) but had a low altitude inspection of the power station, and now has experience in working the rough thermals that they generate.
Steve Kittel went for a flight in the DG-1000 with Dieter (one of the contest organisers). They flew a task then decided to hang about near Bautzen while the contest gliders finished. Unfortunately they miscalculated and were unable to make the field. To the delight and howls of laughter at the finish line, they landed out. Steve now has first hand experience in how heavy a DG-1000 is to rig. Briefing tomorrow should be very interesting.
We had a lovely Thai curry stirfry cooked by Ralph. Steve still hadn’t shown up and people were eating seconds. There was a real danger than there would be none left so Sabine had him paged over the loudspeaker. Usually all announcements are in German, but we had a good laugh at “Steve Kittel – please go back to your camp for your dinner” – smirk.
After dinner we found the problem with Lisa’s Winpilot-Volkslogger was the Volkslogger cable. Helge found another cable and we pulled the fuselage out of the trailer to check that all worked as it should – and it did.
In the evening, there was a fire to sit around and music again from the guitar. These guys are almost as good at fire as Redmond.
We have only 2 days left and no sign of the weather going bad. It was about 30oC today. To have 10 days straight in a German contest is very unusual.