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WORLDPlans for holding the 1965Cham-

pionships in Yugoslavia were wellalong when disaster struck at Skop-je and that whole nation turned tostraightening out the mess. TheUnited Kingdom saved the daywith an offer to organise theChampionships in England. There turned out to be plenty of prob-lems, including a demand fromthe British Treasury for a truly for-midable sum for the use of theR.A.F. airfield at South Cerney andfor certain services associated withthis. Fortunately, the well known tobacco company, W. D. & H. W.Wills (No connection with Philip Wills) came to the rescue with avery generous offer to meet a sub-stantial share of the expenses. Thismade it possible to reduce the en-trance fees from to

Great Britain is not great in areaand it was necessary to choose asite from which a reasonable dis-tance can be flown without head-ing out to sea. The weather comesmainly from the South West andthe large controlled air space around London was a major factorin determining the choice of theSouth Cerney location.

The R.A.F. at South Cerney isconcerned primarily with training cadets so there is plenty of accom-modation. The station is not pres-ently an operational field so thereis also plenty of vacant hangarspace. It lies in an exquisite settingon the edge of the Cotswold Hillsand the countryside is dotted withdelightful towns and villages andmany of the houses are built ofthe local stone.

The United States team came inon a Boeing 707 at Mildenhall,an R.A.F. airfield and U.S.A.F.base; they arrived on schedulearound noon on a sunny Wednes-day the 19th of May. They were met by our man in England whowas awaiting them with a hetero-geneous fleet of vehicles. We allset out for Wethersfield, anotherR.A.F. airfield, where the fourships and trailers had arrived aweek earlier on four C-119 trans-ports, flown by the US. Air ForceReserve.

We proceeded with appropriate caution, caressing the left-handhedge and we pulled into Wethers-

SOARING CHAMPIONSHIPSby HAROLD DREW

R.A.F. photo

Aerial view of So. Cerney's two runways with sailplanes set for take off. Open Class sailplanesare a t bottom of photo, Standard Class a t top. Tugs are RAF de Havilland Chipmunks, 31 ofwhich were used to launch the participants.

field unscathed. At Wethersfieldwe sorted ourselves out a bit,hitched up, and set out for Lasham where we planned on a few days of practice before going on to SouthCerney. This was necessary be-cause at South Cerney arrange-ments had been made to receiveus not earlier than Saturday 22ndof May.

The Lasham Gliding Associa-tion was kind enough to offer theirexcellent facilities to all those arriv-ing from abroad for the Champion-ships. The U.S. team was in theair on Thursday morning, which turned out to be a booming thermalday.

Boet Domisse of South Africa cre-ated a sensation by going round a300 kilometer triangle at more than50 mph, at least 9 mph faster thanthe current U.K. record. Domissewas flying the new B.J. 2, designedand built in South Africa. Mainly ofwooden construction, it has a spanof 15 meters and a laminar flowwing with Fowler flaps. The centersection has no dihederal which con-siderably simplifies the construc-tion of this item. The B.J. 2 has noair brakes and relies on two jetti-sonable drag chutes which can bedeployed singly or together.

Friday and Saturday were alsogood and on Saturday our shipswere flown to South Cerney andthe trailers hauled over the hillsfrom Lasham.

Arrangements for receiving us atSouth Cerney were well plannedand smoothly executed. In spite ofthe polyglot nature of an interna-tional contest, nobody had any dif-ficulty in settling down in the ex-cellent billets. We all relaxed intothe arms of Lethe without delay.

We were airborne again on Sun-day; on Monday it rained; on Tues-day the committee set a short prac-tice triangle which was completedby only two pilots, Cartry ofFrance (Edelweiss) and Spanig ofWest Germany (D-36).All the U.S.pilots landed on the second leg. Conditions were patchy and calledfor good judgment and deviationsfrom course. The crews gainedsome valuable experience over thesecondary road system, The coun-try lanes of England are narrow and tortuous and the sign posting is none too easy to master.

On Wednesday it rained most ofthe time and nobody made a seri-ous attempt at the distance taskwhich was rather hopefully an-nounced at noon. Wally Scott seized

6 S O A R I N G

the opportunity to cement interna-tional goodwill by accepting hospi-tality from the Russians. As a resultof his experience, he advised ex-treme caution when participating in Russian celebrations. Althoughnone of the Russian team spokeany English, they brought along anexcellent interpreter and our rela-tions with them became cordial.Our morning greeting of “DobroeUtro” never failed to elicit a smil-ing response.

On Thursday we awakened to blue skies but this lovely morningsoon deteriorated and the task set-ters, confronted with heavy cloud cover and a strong Northeaster, seta short triangle. The first leg was towindward and nobody made anyprogress. Opinions expressed on thesubject of English weather tended to be disparaging.

Friday, our last practice day atSouth Cerney, dawned grey, cold and windy. No task was set. Even a practice launch for the Standard Class was abandoned.

---The poor weather during the

practice week provided plenty ofopportunities for looking over theships, particularly those which werenew to us.

The Russians came in for a lotof attention, especially the KAI-14‘s entered in the Standard Class.These ships have been given thenickname “The Tea Spoons” be-

The Duke of Edinburgh, in trench coat, accompanied by Philip Wills and Anne Welch, chatswith Ed Butts, A. J. Smith and two other members of the U.S. Soaring Team.

cause of the very slender fuselage and the spoon-like shape of thecockpit when the canopy is re-moved. The main spar root fittingsare substantial aluminum alloyforgings. The dies for these twodifferent forgings would be veryexpensive and they would not havebeen sunk unless a considerableproduction volume had been ex-pected. The KAI-19, a T-tail ship from the same design team, was

Photo by A. F. Tinsley

Sir Roy Jenkins, Minister of Aviation, right foreground, looks over the Russian Standard ClassKAI-14, three U.S.S.R. pilots standing by. Note the rear vision mirror on top of the instrumentconsole necessitated by the extreme reclining position of the pilot.

A U G U S T . . . 1965

originally entered in the OpenClass, However it did not show upand the Russians flew two of thewell known A-15s in the OpenClass, Both the KAI-14 and theKAI-19 are of all metal construc-tion.

The Russian ships were delayed at Dover by an extensive dock sidefire which paralysed freight move-ments. Meanwhile, the Russianboys, who had no knowledge ofwhat had happened to their ships,were distraught with anxiety andwould not be comforted.

The new German Phoebus Stand-ard Class machine, built by kow, came in for a great deal ofattention. This ship is constructedalmost entirely of plastic. It is saidto have “an ultra laminar flow"wing and has a distinctive all fly-ing horizontal fin. There has beenconsiderable discussion on whetherthe materials used would be com-patible with operation in areaswhere high sun temperatures pre-vail.

The most sensational ship en-tered was undoubtedly the D-36 de-signed and built at DarmstadtUniversity. In flight, the extremelyflexible fibreglass wings curve up-wards to an astonishing extent. However, when landing, the wingsdo not seem to deflect downwardsto an embarrassing extent. As thecontest proceeded, this formidableentry became known as “Old Gum-mi Flugel” (Rubber Wing). The ra-

7

dius of the leading edge is tiny,about inch. This means thatthe wing is efficient only at oneangle of attack, two degrees. The flaps are used to insure that theangle of attack is the same at allspeeds. Besides keeping the wingdrag very low, this insures thatthe fuselage is not dragged through the air at an inefficient angle atany speed. Ventilation is providedthrough an intake behind the cock-pit in order to preserve the laminarflow.

The Australians brought alongthe Boomerang ES-60. This Stand-ard Class ship was designed forAustralian conditions by Harry Schneider, the son of the GrunauBaby designer. The wing spars and ribs have an allowance for finishing after assembly but before the at-tachment of the rather thick ply-wood skin. The swept back all-fly-ing horizontal fin has no tabs; aspring trimmer is used.

The Englishman, John William-son has set a new fashion by paint-ing his leading edges black in or-der to expedite the disintegrationof ice. Several pilots have followedhis example, including Dick John-son.

On Saturday, May 29th, theChampionships were officially de-clared open by the Air Minister,Sir Roy Jenkins. This involved standing in a 15knot wind with thetemperature at 48 degrees, Merci-fully the speakers kept it brief andthe Minister conducted his reviewof the aircraft at a smart pace. Hislongest pause occurred at the Irishentry where he was plied with Irish coffee by a thoughtful leprechaun.

Sunday, May 30th, the first con-test day, showed no improvementin the weather and the task setterscapitulated at 11.00 hrs. The offi-cial weather forecast referred to “aslight risk of thermals during the af-ternoon”. These materialised and although feeble, provided a littlepractice for the team.

On Monday, May 31st, the wea-ther changed at last. It rained. Arace was announced for both clas-ses, but the weather failed to im-prove until too late and the taskwas abandoned. However, all our boys were in the air for practice in the late afternoon when consid-erable thermal activity developed.We were honored during the morn-ing by the presence of the Duke ofEdinburgh who arrived in his hel-icopter. The Duke is a strong sup-

8

Daily pilots meeting. O n stage, lef t to right, C. E. Wallington, Chief Meteorologist; Mrs. AnneWelch, Championships birector; French and German interpreters. Pointing to the map andexplaining the order of take off i s Wing Comander J. Croshaw, Operations Officer.

porter of soaring activities in theU.K.

On Tuesday, June lst, the morn-ing looked unpromising and brief-ing was postponed until 12.00 hrs.A short race to Cosford airfieldnear Wolverhampton (67.5 miles )was the task setter’s choice. Openclass launching started soon after14.00 hrs. and the Standard Classfollowed with a mean launching in-terval of 25 seconds. In the Stand-dard Class, TonyDeane - Drum-mond U.K. and Kepka of Polandlanded 14 miles short with scoresof 378 points each. Dick Schrederand Wally Scott were close with366 and 326 points. In the OpenClass, Spanig in the D-36 andWroblewski of Poland flying a Fo-ka reached the goal for 750 and 718points. Dick Johnson finished fifthwith 512 points. A.J. Smith was less fortunate. He had an early startbut elected to cruise around inweak thermals seeking the 1,000meters maximum starting altitude. However, conditions over SouthCerney deteriorated and he choseto cross the line at about 2,000 feetwell after most of the ships haddeparted. Conditions locally wereso poor that he was driven down afew miles out. Difficult retrieve conditions prevented a second startand Jim failed to score. Conditions varied greatly and were fairly goodfrom 15 miles along the course.Those who reached this distance all

got within 30 miles of the goal.The scoring system features a re-

duction in the maximum points un-less 60% of the starting ships com-plete a certain qualifying distance, usually 60 kilometers.

Wednesday June 2nd, at the 9.00hrs. briefing, we were promisedsunshine and thermals and given a107 mile triangle to the North-ward, where conditions were ex-pected to improve progressively with cloud base at 4,000 feet and tops at 6,000 feet. The forecast wasnot far out and conditions weremuch easier than on the previousday. Kuntz of West Germany, fly-ing the SHK finished first in theOpen Class at 66.7 kph. and Ritzi ofSwitzerland, flying a Standard Elfe finished first in the Standard Classat 62.5 kph. All the U.S. team fin-ished the course although JimSmith was down to 500 feet short of the second turn point. He wasrescued by his crew who success-fully located him and directed himto a more vigorous thermal in whichhe rapidly climbed to 4,000 feet.The team did well with Dick John-son fifth, Jim Smith 11th in theOpen and Dick Schreder third,Wally Scott 12th in the Standard Class. Dick Schreder now toppedthe Standard Classwith 1.318nointsand Scott stood sixth. Dick Johnsonstood sixth in the Open with 1,422points, not far behind Spanig wholed with 1,651 points. The mean

S O A R I N G

speed of Open Class finishersworked out at 11 percent faster than that of the Standard Class.However there were many 15meterships flying in the Open Class sothat the potential differential wasno doubt greater than 11 percenton this particular day.

Briefing was carried out in alarge hangar, The public address system was very effective and capa-ble of drowning out any amountof chatter. Ann Welch, Director ofthe Championships and Chief TaskSetter, announced the tasks andchided us for our peccadillos andprovided essential information all with great good humor. She spokeslowly and her very precise diction must have been very welcome tothose not too familiar with the Eng-lish language. All important infor-mation was repeated in French and German. Wally Wallington, the of-ficial meteorologist, spoke withgreat confidence (he was not al-ways right) and provided very de-tailed information. The graphical presentation of the weather was ex-cellent and the symbols chosencalled for no linguistic ability. Lit-tle time was devoted to answeringunnecessary questions.

Both of the Russian StandardClass KAI-14’s were damaged early in the Championships, Mr. Kami-shov, the designer of these ships,who came along with the team, at-tributed the cause of both incidents to “pilot error”.Suslov made a land-ing in a grain crop with a crosswind. Mr. Kamishov stated that thepilot was slipping and touched theground simultaneously with thewheel, the wing tip and the tail skid.The result was a ground loop. Jaru-shevichus landed on uneven pas-ture, ballooned and stalled in. The KAI-14 seems to have a rather high landing speed stated by the design-er to be approximately 45 mph. Vi-sion is none too good owning to therather extreme recumbent posture of the pilot. Suslov’s ship needed amajor repair job. This was car-ried out by the R.A.F. and Suslovwas soon flying again. The damage to the other ship was reported to be repairable but not in the timeavailable before the end of theChampionships. Suslov subsequent-ly flew with the “training canopy”,which allows a less recumbent pos-ture at the expense of increaseddrag.

Thursday June 3rd. The Task

A U G U S T . . . 1 9 6 5

Photo by Earl Seagars

Rear view of the Australian Boomerang showing the swept back all-flying horizontal tail.

Committee set a 108 mile triangu-lar race and this turned out to bewell chosen, The daily routine oncontest days includes sending upscouting sailplanes reporting condi-tions over the radio to the TaskCommittee which can thus decide the time for the first launch with some assurance that they are notgoing to have a flock of shipslanding back on the rather small air-field.

The use of the “designated start” for all races works out extremelywell. The ships are lined up onthe grid well before take off inthe launch order for the day. Whenthe Director decides that the timehas come, the R.A.F. Chipmunksexplode into life and taxi into posi-tion in sequence. The tow line handlers use a hook and drop thering exactly at the nose of the glid-er where a crewman snaps it on.A launch rate of three per minuteis achieved, thus a whole class isairborne in about 15 minutes. This significantly reduces the luck fac-tor.

The morning was pleasant and sunny and the open class was sentaway first at 13.22 hrs. by whichtime the thermals were adequate. The first two legs provided no par-ticular problems but the final legwas a killer. The sky became over-cast, the haze thickened and the thermals became weaker and fewer. Johnson, Scott and Schreder all landed short defeated by naviga-tional problems and weak lift. We watched in agony as Dick Schredersank into a ploughed field threemiles short. If he had made theair field, his time would probablyhave been the best for the day,

Jim Smith did an excellent job,

finishing third at 61.5kph, and rais-ing his standing to 17th from 20th. Considering that he failed to scoreon the first day, this is a creditablerecovery. The best speed in theOpen was Wroblewski’s at 69.6kph for 1,000points, putting him inthe lead with 2,646 points over Ma-kula with 2,399 points. Francois Henry, flying one of the fourFrench Edelweiss ships, made thefastest time in the Standard Class,with a speed of 72.2 kph which is2.6 kph better than the best OpenClass speed. This brought Henry into first place.

Cloud flying (with some restric-tions) is permissible in the United Kingdom and the ability to center accurately in cloud is an importantfactor. On many days, ability toclimb fast in clouds is a very val-uable asset in contest flying.

Several teams, notably the Poles,the French and the British, madeextensive use of D.F. With powerful transmitters at South Cerney andon the retrieve cars, they were able to help pilots flying in cloud or inhaze with fixes and headings.

Friday, June 4th. A free distance task was proclaimed.Weak to mod-erate thermals and light winds wereforecast. It didn’t look like a dayfor records but it turned out some-what better than expected. FurtherNorth, the wind was expected to beWesterly and most pilots plannedto fly with just sufficient East intheir course to take them their es-timated maximum distance with-out reaching the North Sea. As itturned out, the conditions seemedto be poorest towards the East. Other considerations included the Birmingham control zone and themountains of the Pennine Chain.

9

The correct decision seemed to beto pass to the West of the controlzone, thereby avoiding the indus-trial haze which was drifting East from Birmingham. Haze became areal problem further North where much of Britain’s heavy industry isconcentrated. The task might have been less exacting if it had been set at the end of the Whitsun holiday week-end when at least some of theplants might have been less active.

Adequate landing fields are nonetoo easy to find in some of theseNorthern industrial areas.

Wally Scott put up a fine per-formance in the Standard Class, fly-ing 206 miles for 1,000 points plat-ing him sixth. Dick Schreder alsodid a good job but dropped oneplace to seventh. In the Open, DickJohnson flew 186 Miles for 824points, bringing him up from 19th to 18th . . . Jim Smith flew 147miles and dropped two places to19th. Kriznar, an engineering stu-dent from Yugoslavia, flying theMeteor, made the best distance for the day, 210 miles. Wroblewskiheld on to first place in the OpenClass overall standing, and Henrydid the same in the Standard Class.

The tenth O.S.T.I.V. Congress took place during the morning. Theprincipal business concerned thetrophy for the 1965 O.S.T.I.V. con-test for the best Standard Class sailplane. The award went to the de-signers of the 15 meter Dart, F.N.Slingsby, J.C. Reussner and W. Sla-ter. The jury also stated that “. . .special commendation should bemade to Mr. W. Okarmus the de-signed of the Foka 4.

The Dart 15, flown by GeorgeBurton of the British team, finally

finished in fifth place. The 17 me-ter Darts flown in the Open Classby Nick Goodhart of the Britishteam and David Webb of the Ca-nadian finished in 7th and 28thplace, respectively.

Saturday, June 5th was declareda rest day because ten pilots on Fri-day exceeded 300 kilometers. Nat-urally it turned out to be an ex-cellent soaring day.

The briefing on Sunday June 6thwas postponed until 11.00 hrs. be-cause of uncertain weather. At thebriefing a dog leg race was an-nounced but this was subsequently abandoned because, although ithad been soarable at 10.00 hrs, it was no longer soarable at noonwhen the ships were assembled onthe grid. The weather improved la-ter and several pilots took the op-portunity for some practice. Thefree distance task two days earlier had marked the completion of fourcontest days, so ensuring that the Championships would be valid.The earlier Championship in theUnited Kingdom took place in al-most continuous rain a t Camphilland provided a total of only fourcontest days.

The morning of Monday, June 7th was quite misty and rather rem-iniscent of an Elmira morning. Thetask setters confidently announced a 101 mile race to Spitalgate R.A.F.base near Grantham. Light winds and thunder storms were forecast. The thermals turned out to berather better than the “moderate”strength which was forecast. From the ground the sky at times lookedlike a soaring paradise. The Stand-ard Class was launched first andthe first to go was the Englishman,

A. J. Smith’s Sisu IA.

10

Photo by Earl Seagars

R.A.F. photo

Vladimir Chuvikov, pilot of the Russian A-i5Open Class sailplane, points out some salientfeatures of i ts instrumentation to Sqn. Ldr.G. E. Young, Commanding Officer of theRAF Chipmunk tug squadron.

Tony Deane - Drummond, flying the Olympia 465. In the light andvariable wind condition, he veeredoff course before becoming air-borne and before he had enoughspeed to maintain control. His wingstruck several runway markers andboth the wings and the tail finsuffered damage too severe to per-mit an immediate restart. He wassuccessful in obtaining permissionto switch to the Dart which hadbeen entered for the O.S.T.I.V.award. This permission was grantedon the clear understanding that the flight would be made without prej-udice to a decision on the validityof the points scored. He finishedninth in the Standard Class.

A little later, Petroczy, flying aRussian built A-15 for Hungary wasin collision with Cartry, flying anEdelweiss for France. Petroczy’sship suffered only minor damageand he pressed on to finish 6th. Cartry headed back with serious wing damage and came in low atSouth Cerney. In a matter of min-utes, he was back in the air againwith a wing borrowed from theEdelweiss entered in the O.S.T.I.V.competition.

Tony’s case was handled by theInternational Jury at the request ofthe Organisers because a pilot ofthe host country was involved.They allowed him his points. TheOrganisers gave Cartry his points,ruling that the collision was not hisfault. He had gone on to finish12th, in spite of a late start in dete-riorating conditions. On subsequent days, the organisers resourcefully

S O A R I N G

substituted small colored balloonsfor the rigid wooden markers.

The fates were again unkind to Dick Schreder. He was heard to an-nounce the initiation of his finalglide. It was. However he landed four miles short. He had mistakenthe sea breeze front for thunderstorm activity and found himself inthe severe down on the landward side of it. He was unable to extri-cate himself. Next morning, a cyn-ical fellow team member was seenproffering him a coil of rope and pointing to the gaff of the R.A.F.ensign mast, Dick had made veryfast time and would have finished with the leaders if he had made thegoal.

Henry (France) and Ritzi (Swit-zerland) made the fastest times inthe Standard Class which also gavethem first and second place in thecumulative scoring. Henry seemedto have settled down in firstplace. Spanig, flying the formidable “Gummi made the bestspeed in the Open, 90.4 kph.This was better than Henry’s speedby 13 kph. He moved up fromfifth to second place. Wally Scottmade 69.5 kph finishing eighth and retaining sixth place in the Stand-ard Class. Dick Johnson made73.5 kph also finishing eighth inthe open class. He moved up from18th to 17th place. Jim Smith made69.7 kph and retained 19th place.

The weather was very much clearer and nobody had any navi-gational problems. Out of 87 start-ers only eight failed to finish. Thescene at Spitalgate was an ani-mated one. Although Monday wasa public holiday, the crews foundno traffic problems, no doubt be-cause the route included no roadsserving coastal resorts.

Tuesday, June 8th brought con-tinuous rain and no task was set.Wednesday June 9th brought morerain and the task setters cried uncle at 12.30 hrs. These two days provided plenty of opportunitiesfor gabfests and the Polish teameffort came in for a lot of comment.The Polish boys became known asthe Foka Squadron because oftheir highly developed and verysuccessful formation flying tactics.On the second day Makula andWroblewski both averaged exact-ly 62.2 kph and Popiel and Kepka57.5 and 57.0 kph. On the thirdday, Wroblewski and Makula fin-ished first and second. On thefourth day, which was free dis-

The enormous spoilers and dive brakes of the Polish Foka 4. Photo by Earl Seaqars

tance, Kepka, Makula and Wrob-lewski all landed at the same placefor a distance of 299 kilometers.

On Thursday June l0th, WallyWallington was in a gay mood andfor the first time promised us“strong thermals”. He dismissed thestrato-cumulus threat with consid-erable assurance. Ann Welch, aschief task setter, announced a 180mile triangular race with the first turn at Lasham 52 miles away. However the high overcast stayedwith us. (TIROS came up with apicture which showed that a rathersmall patch of strato-cumulus wascentered over the South Cerney area.) The Open class was sentaway in mid-afternoon in marginalconditions but the Standard classnever got started at all. Only sixpilots managed to complete more than 60 kilometers and, under therules, Thursday did not qualify asa contest day.

Friday June 11th turned out to be the final day of the Champion-ships because on Saturday we en-joyed almost continuous drizzle. However on Friday morning weawakened to blue skies and gentle zephyrs. At the 9.00 hrs. briefing, we were set distance along a line.The line was a “broken” one with a short leg to the North East, an-other short leg to the South East and then a long leg South West tothe North Cornwall coastal villageof Perranporth. If anybody suc-ceeded in covering the formidabledistance to the Bristol Channel atPerranporth, he would have been then entitled to continue on along the coast for additional distance less the penalty for landing South of the line.

Nobody had any problems on thetwo short legs but, after rounding the second turn the going became

progressively more difficult as highclouds moved in from the West.Finally conditions became impos-sible in the area around the Cityof Bath. The leaders explored thelast line of cumulus in vain andwere finally driven to set out into the stable air on their final glides.All this was most unfortunate be-cause it resulted in all the leaders being forced down in the Bath area regardless of the time at whichthey reached it. This provided little opportunity for pilots to improvetheir position on what turned outto be the last day of the contest.The best distance was 275.5 kilo-meters and 12 pilots made betterthan 250 kilometers. None of thesepilots scored less than 927 points.

The total scores after this, thesixth contest day, were the finalChampionship scores. Henry re-tained his first place in the Stand-ard Class with a total score of 4945points. Ritzi retained his secondplace with 4,798points. In the Open Class, Wroblewski retained his firstplace with 5,269 points and Spanigretained his second place with 5,164points. Wally Scott and DickSchreder finished up sixth and 15in the Standard Class. Dick Johnson and Jim Smith in the Open Classfinished 18th and 19th. Jim made arough landing in an oat field,ground looped and seriously dam-aged the Sisu. Fortunately he didnot suffer any serious injury him-self. He was also fortunate as thismishap did not affect his final scoresince he could not have flown onSaturday had it been a contest day. The winner of the Open Class,Jan Wroblewski was the youngestmember of the Polish team. He isa bachelor aged 25 years. He wasNational Champion of Poland in1963 but this is the first time that

A U G U S T . . . 1 9 6 5 11

he has flown in World Champion-ships. He holds two Polish nationalrecords, 678 kilometers out and re-turn and the 500 kilometer triangleat 91.3 kph. Jan is presently study-ing television electronics.

Francois Louis Henry, winner ofthe Standard Class, is 28 and mar-ried to a gliding wife who has pre-sented him with two future glid-er pilots. Francois has twice wonthe French Nationals and, in 1963,he led at Junin for three days, fly-ing his Breguet in the Open Class.

The weather during the prac-tice week and during the contestwas poor even by English stand-ards. Nevertheless, it was not asbad as it was at Camphill in 1954.The six contests completed at South

Cerney bring the 1965 Champion-ships in line with the average forpast Championships.

As the Championships pro-gressed, the subject of externalnavigational aids came in for more and more discussion. In the final issue of the excellent “Champion-ships Journal” Ann Welch sums upthe general consensus of opinionin the following words. “. . . themoment has now come when inthe interests of the future of Cham-pionship flying, we must all con-sider the matter of external aid to,even control of, the pilot. Do wewant Championship flying which issubmerged in a sea of electronics,met and radio outstations and evenaircraft to mark thermals, to the ex-

tent that these things become more important than the individual pi-lot himself? Or do we want to limitradio to a retrieving aid and metto a forecast and the evidence ofthe pilot’s eyes? I am sure that thisis a matter to which we must giveboth thought and decision beforethe next Championships.”

During and after the Champion-ships, one heard praise from allsides for the excellence of the ar-rangements made by the organis-ers, The British Gliding Associationand for the splendid cooperation ofthe Royal Air Force. There is no doubt that the British have set astandard which will be a challengeto future organisers of these inter-national events.

I

S O A R I N G

As you have just read our soaring teams have a long andproud history of international participation. Over the lastseveral years theopportunity to competeinternationally hasgrown as more classesbecome sanctioned bythe FAI. More teamsand eligible pilots putsthe title of WorldChampion within thereach of entirely newsegments of thesoaring communityincluding Club, Worldand Junior pilots. The chart above shows when each FAIclass participated in their first World Gliding Champion-ship. Notice the recent growth in classes and events.

An urgent need...

More teams, eligible pilots andinternational events have stretchedteam funding well past the break-ing point putting our teams abilityto compete internationally at risk.

Contributions make it happen...

While many competing teams receive governmentassistance our teams rely on a mix of direct contributionsand perpetual trust income to compete internationally.

Direct contributions are immediately available to theteam at their full value. Participating in the SSA sweep-stakes, buying a raffle ticket at a contest or sending acheck to the SSA for team funding are all examples ofdirect contributions so critical to fielding our soaringteams. Perpetual trust incomehas become increasinglyimportant to fielding our teamsinternationally. This type ofcontribution is perpetual as thefunds are invested with the income used to sponsor teamsperpetually. Robertson Trust contributions provide acritical, stable, long-term, source of team funding.

A long term strategy?

Since both types ofcontributions aretax deductible, along-term contri-bution strategy tominimize taxburden and maxi-mize support mightincorporatecomfortable directcontribution everytwo years andlarger, trust contributions with less frequency. Howmuch to contribute is determined by each of our indi-vidual circumstances. Every dollar counts.

Now is the time...

Not all competition happens inthe air. Often it is what happenson the ground months beforeWorld Soaring Championshipsthat makes the difference.Adequate team funding is where it all starts. Our interna-tional competitors are doing what it takes to compete andwin and so should we. If our soaring teams are going tocompete internationally they need our support. Whilemost of us can’t be in the cockpit we can still do our partto make sure our pilots have the opportunity to competeand win.

Please make a direct contribution to the U.S. SoaringTeams or a perpetual contribution to the Robertson Trusttoday!

Robertson TrustContributions

John Seaborn5560 Boulder Hills DrLongmont, CO 80503USA

www.robertsontrust.com

Direct Contributions

Larry SandersonSoaring Society of AmericaP.O.Box 2100Hobbs, NM 88241-2100

www.ssa.org

Help Fund The Future of United States Soaring Teams...

FAI Classes Eligible for Competing in

World Soaring Championships

Open 1937 Germany

Two Place* 1952 Spain

Standard 1958 Poland

15-Meter 1978 France

World 1997 Turkey

Junior 1999 Holland

18-Meter 2001 Spain

Club 2001 Australia

Feminine 2001 Lithuania

* Eliminated 1958

Class Year Championship

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