day 2 continued

Day 2 continued: Jenny has just started on a 500km speed task, the consensus is the task is set on yesterdays weather which everyone told us was an "australian day" plenty of cu and good thermals. Today is more blue and reported by Jenny as not being very good.

Still having issues with the water ballast bags and yesterday only got about half water in the glider,which was a disadvantage on what was a pretty fast day. Today we got about 2/3 water so it is getting better.

They do things a bit differently here in Europe:

We grid the gliders at 8am prior to the briefing.

A maximum height limit of 2700 metres has been set for all tasks

No restrictions on which way to thermal within 10km of Szeged

Must radio start time to team manager who passes to organisation

There are 7 tugs and launching was done in under an hour

We have the equivalent of a CTAF for circuit traffic but the tugs operate on another frequency for towing. The tug pilots only seem to talk Hungarian on the radio anyway so it does not matter.

The gliders operate on either the operational frequency or their country frequency so every one is usually on a different frequency.

Weather has been very hot and typical of southern australia in summer, hot and stable under the high pressure and getting better after a cooler change.

Jeremy