The battle of the big classes comes to Texas!
From August 14th to 30th, it’s that time again: a world championship is coming to Uvalde, Texas! The best pilots of the 18 meters, Open and 20 meters Multi-Seat Class will be competing against each other for the 38th time for the titles of World Champion.
A total of 66 gliders from 23 nations will make their way to the Southern part of North America, to Garner Field airport in Uvalde. Some of them already know the weather from the World Championships back in 2012. At this event, they flew 13 out of 14 days with average speeds up to 160 km/h and distances up to 700km! The best pilots had collected over 12.000 points during these spectacular conditions. So, it is safe to say that there will be fast and hot races…
Speaking about local conditions: the weather in Uvalde in August is hot. While they have mild winters, in summer the temperatures are high with only little rain during the year. That leads to great flying conditions with high cloud bases and high sun radiation. So sunscreen is a must and pack your umbrellas and long sleeves to cover yourself from the strong sun.
Just a few words about the area: Uvalde is a little town in the State of Texas, 1.5 hours east of San Antonio and 1.5 hours north-east from the Mexican border. With that location and climate, many different species of animal are specific you don’t normally see in Europe. Even though a few of them could be poisonous (e.g. the rattlesnake), they normally are more afraid of humans than you are of them. But still, beware where you put your hands!
Let us talk about the Worlds and Schempp-Hirth now. A total of 15 SH-gliders will be competing, most of them got shipped from Europe and departed at the beginning of June. Four of them in the 18m-Class and the other eleven in the 20m-Multi-Seat Class.
In the 18m-Class, the Italian team represented by Thomas Gostner and Stefano Ghiorzo will fly Ventus-3T and Ventus-3M, with the self-launcher being only about 4 months out of our factory. Both are known as excellent competition-pilots, Thomas proves this in Grand-Prix flying as well.
The third Ventus-3T flies Peter Harvey from Great Britain, multiple European Champion.
A premiere will be for the fourth Ventus: it’s the second produced electro self-launcher and will fly its first competition there, flown by our former Salesman Simon Schröder from Germany. As multiple world champion, last year he dominated the German nationals with a Ventus-3T and became German champion in the 18m class with more than 400 points lead.
Simon is looking forward to race under Uvalde’s famous endless cloudstreets being convinced of the Ventus’ advantages in feeling and finding the energy lines.
Now to the double seaters, which class is again dominated by the Arcus with at least 11 out of 15 gliders. Many famous pilots are flying Schempp-Hirth here as well!
Starting with the “locals”: American pilot Sarah Arnold and US-legend Karl Striedieck will fly an Arcus M. Both are talented competition pilots with international successes, such as Sarah becoming Women’s World Champion in 2020. The next team is from Australia, flying an Arcus M: Adam Woolley and Keith Gateley. Adam is a big SH-enthusiast and shares his flight stories, his experience and famous “mods” detailed on social media. Now from Germany, Martin Theisinger and Yannick Frey with their Arcus M, which was recently retrofitted to an Arcus 20 features. Martin is a well-known pilot at national competitions with countless participations. Also flying an Arcus M are Andreas Lutz and Wolfgang Janowitsch from Austria. This team is our secret favorite, because Andreas is the developer and main-engineer of the Ventus-E and is involved in Laminar Aerotec as well, while Wolfgang is multiple world champion. They both always have a special harmony on board. Now to another well-known team: Steve Jones and Gary Coppin from Great Britain. They fly together on an Arcus M for a long time already and not only in competitions, also on many gliding holidays! We know both well because Steve is our representative in Great Britain from Southern Sailplanes. We continue with the Belgian team: Francois Delfosse and Arnaud de Broqueville from Belgium. Arnaud is visiting us each season flying our local “little World Championship”, the famous „Hahnweide Wettbewerb”) They fly their Arcus T. Back to France with the winners of Hahnweide competition recent edition, with Louis Bouderlique and Philippe de Péchy on Arcus-T. Team Netherlands will be represented by Erik Borgmann and Mathijs Van Houweninge on Arcus-M, Erik being back to the top level in competitions "full throttle”! after years missing time. Still central Europe, Team Denmark is composed of Tom Jørgensen & Nielsen, multiple Danish champions. Then comes Team Italia with Margot Acquaderni and Maurro Brunazzo, nice to see more and more Women in the cockpits! Last, but not least, Team south Africa will be represented by Denner & Coetzee we know very little about, but pilots from South Africa are one to check as usual!
Now it’s just time to say: good luck and lots of fun to all participants, families and volunteers! Enjoy your time and may the best pilots win! We will avidly check the tracking system based on Flarm safety devices these coming days!
By the way: if you have any problems with your glider: one of our final assembly senior inspector, Carsten Hilbrecht, will be on-site to help you fix any occurring problems.
