Greetings from Tábor, Czechia, where the US Team is attending the 39th World Gliding Championship. A total of 115 pilots are competing in three classes here: Club, Standard and 15-Meter.
Our team consists of four pilots: In Club class, Tony Condon and Sylvia Grandstaff are both flying LS-4 gliders. In 15-Meter class, Jared Granzow is flying a JS-3 and Mike Sorenson has a Ventus 2. We have no pilot in Standard class: Thomas Greenhill, who finished second in the 2023 Junior WGC (in Poland), was interested in competing, but could not arrange the necessary time away from work (three weeks being about the minimum required).
Tábor (roughly "TAH-bur") is a small city of around 34,000 in south-central Czechia (the country name now seemingly preferred to "Czech Republic"), situated about 80 km south of Prague. The closest part of Germany is 90 km southwest, and northwestern Austria is only 47 km south-southeast. Given good weather, we expect tasks will have pilots regularly flying over these two neighboring countries.
If you mentally separate Scandinavia from the rest of Europe, Tabor [I plan henceforth to omit diacritics] is pretty close to the center of what remains. It's a bit surprising to note just how far north we are: in terms of latitude, we're around 430 km north of Montreal, and less than 200 km south of Hudson Bay. In early June this means sunrise before 5am, and over 16 hours of daylight.
Tabor is far above average in the support it offers to folks at a glider contest. Within a couple of kilometers of the field are stores sufficient to meet almost all our needs (I'll discuss laundry and ice cream in a later report). The restaurant situation is highly commendable. On my first day here, I corralled a local pilot who offered five suggestions; the four we've thus far visited have each earned the coveted "Must return" rating. Value for money is conspicuously good.
The principal feature of the Tabor airfield is an enormous grass runway. It's labelled Runway 11/29 (true orientation is 117/297 degrees); it measures 580 x 4370 ft. The width allows a grid five gliders wide, an adjacent lane for towplane landings, plus another for glider "relight" landings, plus a track for vehicles to use driving to and from the grid – all with room to spare. This is luxury compare to most glider contest sites. The fact that (with supervision by a marshal) cars can safely move between the trailer area and the grid while launches are in progress is unusual – and much appreciated.
There is also a substantial NW/SE grass runway, now given over to parking 115 gliders and their trailers. These don't come close to filling it up – I estimate that another 40 or so could easily fit. If normal levels of WGC crowding were deemed acceptable here, I think 200 might be manageable.
Weather during the practice period has not been the best. When the sun shines here it seems to quickly produce decent lift to useful altitudes. But sunny days have been the exception – we've had plenty of low cloud and rain (mostly light; occasionally heavy), and some thunderstorm threats. The official practice period allowed just one day (Jun 6) on which a substantial number of pilots seriously attempted the task. Best distances were something over 200 km; there were more than a few outlandings.
Today's event was the Opening Ceremony, held in Tabor's historic – and notably attractive – town square. No flying is allowed on this day, which tends to mean weather is great and pilots spend much of the ceremony looking skyward wistfully. But not today: we again had low cloud with enough rain and mist to make umbrellas valuable. One feature was an excellent – and LOUD – brass band. The speeches were for the most part commendably brief. The event ended with Rick Sheppe – our International Jury President, and the senior FAI official here – declaring our competition officially open.
– John Good