July 20th - Day 9 : CANCELLED DAY

Task 7 also significantly changed the team results, until then the Austrians were coming in 4th and the Italians were tied on first place with the Swiss. As G. Heinrichs (AUT) said: "The Empire Strikes back!" as they regained the top position.
Look at the updated team results:

DAY 20/07/10 CANCELLED DAY

THERE IS HIGH RISK OF THUNDERSORMS, IN THE PYRENEES THAT WILL AFFECT THE AREA OF TREMP AND AGER. AT 8am there were already BIG towers of clouds over and behind launch. It is 9.45am right now and there is THUNDER and some rain...

TL BRIEFING AT 10:00

OVERALL RESULTS
Gerolf Heinrichs 6425 points
Thomas Weissenberger 6134 points
Attila Bertok 6079 points

TEAMS
AUT 17322 points
ITA 17099 points
GBR 17069 points

TASK 7
Thomas Weissenberger 964 points
Laurent Thevenot 950 points
Dan Vyhnalik 912 points

Last night, while driving back to the hotel there was a beautiful view of some "Mammatus" clouds, a type of formation I haven't seen very often. This is what it looked like:

Task 7

This report is coming a little bit late, or I could also say "early this morning", but my co-wrokers already posted some interesting information about the task! I am sitting at headquarters typing as I hear the THUNDER on the back and feel the greyish light out there...

Getting back to Task 7, it ended up being very selective and a "scrambler" as I like to call them.
89 pilots took off and only 19 made it all the way, that is a bit over 20%. The pilots ended up evenly spread throughout the course which increased the day's quality.
Sitting at goal last evening was quite exciting because at first (between 5.30 and 6pm), we couldn't see anyone coming plus with the storms developing to the left of course and the headwind, at some point we had our doubts of anyone making it. Then some minutes after 6 we saw it: the little "glider-looking" dot in the sky, behind the birds on the hill. It wasn't clear if it really was a glider or not. As the seconds went by and the until-then-unidentified-object got bigger showing itself to us as a GLIDER!!! We were expecting to see more of those as usual, but for a strange reason we couldn't see any. Well, it was easy: there weren't any others!!! Tom Weissenberger came in almost 25 minutes before the second pilot! He spotted a dust devil in the flats approx. 30kms before goal and climbed on an integrated 7m/s to cloudbase (2500mts) and from there he glided practically on a straight line for 28kms (except for a couple of turns) leaving EVERYONE miles behind.
Second in was Laurent Thevenot-FRA (who actually was 6mins faster than Thomas) and, around 5mins later, a group of 6 pilots rushed in. Then there was another 5mins break and the next group of 5 pilots came in. The last pilot came in at 7.42pm short before the closing of the task (8pm). And that was it for the day...

Unfortunately Carl Wallbank (GBR), who was climbing up in the results, and Davide Guiducci (ITA) landed 2.5 and 3kms short of goal!!! Ouch!!! But, that is the game and most of the great pilots have gone through that "traumatic" experience! Carl said he was racing very hard and flying great, that he should've slowed down to make sure he'd make it, but after flying so fast and so good for most of the course, I guess, it is very difficult to "step off the gas pedal"...
Marc Utrillo (ESP) was acclaimed with cheers by the goal staff (also Spanish)!!

Results Task 7 here.
Updated Overall Results here.
Updated Team Results here.
Tracks Task 7 here.

Thomas Weissenberger (AUT) first pilot at goal and he wins TASK7 with a time of 3:14:00

PILOTS AT GOAL
Heinrichs (AUT), Uhjelyi (HUN), Bertok (HUN), Ploner (ITA), Alonzi (FRA), Voiblet (SUI), Vyhnalik (CZE), Crossingham (GBR), Gricar (SLO), Weissenberger (AUT), Utrillo (ESP), Nedoma (CZE), Mayer (AUT), Rizo (FRA), Barthelmes (GER), Kavanagh (GBR), Thevenot (FRA), Nichele (SUI), Leuskov (RUS).

Ager - Cervin - Balaguer

As you saw in the weather bulletin this morning, the forecast was pretty good with probable thunderstorms to the SE of here; therefore, the Task Committee and Meet Director decided to go NW all the way up to Cervin (pretty close to Castejon de Sos) and back, past Ager, to Balaguer.
It is a 127kms race! The SG radius was set at 14kms towards TP1 as another attempt to avoid overcrowding and putting pressure off them about flying to the valley behind take off. This means they will have to fly this first part with no real rush, stopping to thermal on the way as many times as needed.
The day is looking GOOD with nice clouds around; we are expecting the first pilots in goal at about 5.30pm!

Take a look at the route:

Today's early pictures show different aspects (not in chronological order) of what usually happens on launch.

We have the Austrian Wind Dummy on ramp, assisted by the take off staff, about to launch before the competitors.

All the beautiful smoked sails waiting to be launched by their pilots, nice and organized!

The Italian Team gets together to discuss the task and probably to plan some strategy since at the moment they are tied in 1st place with the Swiss!!!

After everyone has launched, we see a group of Staff Members (wearing nice orange t-shirts), CIVL officials, retrieve drivers (the real VIP's), etc. watching gliders go round and round!

July 19th - Day 8 / Task7

Todays General Weather Information:

Pilots are driving up to launch and will have their briefing, as usual, around 1pm for task information. It is looking rather good with some unstable air. There will be storms to the S-SE of Ager, but probably they will be flying to the N-NE with some head winds. It will be interesting...