TOSS Blog

For those that get up somewhat late you may not have
noticed the almost sudden loss of early morning daylight
heralding the approach of winter. As I write there is a 
loverly cool North Wester blowing through... should be on the slope really.
After the TOSS Aertobatics event there was a predictable lull in activity
on the slope as the TOSS guys took a bit of a break from all the practicing.
For those of who ventured out we had a somewhat mixed bag.
A Saturday up at Chappies in light north westers, then a Sunday
up a Signal Hill in an ever changing westerly day, which resulted
in one of the longest walks ever for yours truly...
more or less a 5km round trip to fetch the Impala!
Then last weekend we get our arse blown off Red Hill in 60 km/h winds
leaving you feeling somewhat like a dehydrated crinkle cut chip by the end of the day.
But as winter approaches we will still have those lazy Autumn days as
last Sunday proved where nary a leaf russled in the woods.

Still, that is one of the great joys of slope soaring. It all changes.... all the time.

I think I am going to start this somewhat backwards...


With a huge kudos going out to mother nature
for once more making an appearance,and this
closely followed by our fantastic sponsors without whom we would never be able to award our
competitors in such a fantastic manner. The Sponsors this year, as before, were were generous beyond belief.
So here are the guys and dolls that we all within the slope community
should really be supporting and as such keeping the slope scene very much alive and well!



Southern Hobbies


Hobby Warehouse


RC Hobby Shop


Anton Benning (AB Models)


Sharklady (http://www.sharklady.co.za/)


AMT


Cape Sailplanes


Traplet Publications

Dixies


InterMet Africa


Dave Greer and Fragram


Russell Conradt


Chris Leal


Kevin Farr


Now back to the action!

Dave Greer and Russell Conradt headed the charge into Cape Town
from Durban and had arrived by Wednesday already to start practicing like the clappers,
and were closely followed by the rest of the Durban crew. We can only thank them immensely for their dedication to slope soaring, in committing 
their time and resources to making this event successful once again.
And so mother nature delivered them two whole days of
intense and perfect South Easters to allow them to come to grips with the
Cape scene once more.
Come the competition morning and the early birds gathered
at Red Hill in the face of 50 km/h South Easters
and the decision was made to move to Smitswinkel Bay
for the day, as it tends to hold the howlers much better.
A brief pilots briefing was held and then the first rounds took place
in near perfect conditions. As the Expert class was up first, the pace
was intense and competition nerves rife, but in all fairness
the level of skills had improved dramatically and the entire class
was far more compressed in terms of scoring than any other previous year.
Next up was the Sportsman's class and enter a dark horse, in the form
of Dave Lentle, previously a Durban resident who now calls the
Cape his home, and who had only entered the night before but has the decided advantage of flying the real thing for a living.
Along with Marc Beckenstrater, these two really took on battle and led the Sportsman's field
in very good lift conditions. Through the 21 pilots partaking in both classes,
the level of skills had improved immensely and the scores were looking close in the top orders of both competitor sets.

Just about lunchtime, the wind did one of those nasty little mood swings
and went a tad southerly, just about enough to destroy the lift. 
As much as Marc Wolfe and myself attempted to get
the second round underway, the lift just simply dissipated and turned nasty.
Steve Meusel led a charge back to Red Hill and called it good, although strong.
Kudos to the entire contestant group, judges, officials, one and all,
who willingly packed it all up and made a run for Red Hill. 


 And yippee was it strong!.. 


 The first round was up and running soonest
 and as the afternoon progressed the wind even ventured to get stronger.
So the rounds went extremely quickly as the gliders were simply pounding
around the sky, screaming like banshies and carrying on much better.
The intense blow back on each move really tested
the pilots at levels they had not required at Smitswinkel Bay
in the somewhat tamer conditions. With round two firmly in the bag and the day waning,
it was decided to retire to the ever present Dixie's and enjoy a cool one or two.

 Sunday was almost a replay of the year before with no wind and hot conditions, 
so we all waited it out at Kommetjie before retiring to Dixies for the prize giving. 
True to form, the scores were really close and in the end. Michel Leusch took the 
honours ahead of Marc Wolffe and Louis Genade in the Expert class,
and Dave Lentle took the honours ahead of Marc Beckenstrater in the Sportsman's class. With all the prizes handed out we closed off one more fantastic event on the Cape slope calendar.

4 years in a row, 4 contests run, what a brilliant achievement one and all!


The Judges - Andrew Anderson, Claude Mackrill and Kurt Mackrill 
- thank you one and all for your time and energy spent up on the judging line. 


Contest Director- the very able Jeff Steffen 
and Safety Marshal-Bill Dewey - thanks for a slick and well run event


The catering team headed by Theunis van Niekerk
Thanks for making sure we were all well fed and looked after once more.


Well done everybody involved and well done Two Oceans Slope Soarers for hosting the event.

Results below:

Sportsman's Class Result
1. 100.00% Dave Lentle 

2. 86.20% Marc Beckenstrater 

3.   83.89% Luke Johnson 

4.   81.58% Dean Halley 

5.   69.54% Anton Benning 

6.   54.20% Mark Phillips 

7.   52.45% Hans van Kamp 

8.   46.78% Schalk Human 

9.   45.24% Noel Cochius 

10.  32.35% Ryan Matchett

11.    9.80% Rudi Smook 


Expert
Class
1. 100.00% Michel Leusch 

2.   93.40% Marc Wolffe

3.   92.81% Louis Genade 

4.   87.27% Kevin Farr 

5.   83.82% Christo Le Roux 

6.   75.29% Steve Meusel 

7.   69.47% Malcolm Riley 

8.   64.78% Dave Greer 

9.   33.00% Russell Conradt

More pics to follow...

Put on boots and go for a walk... to make some noise
and that's what 2000 odd souls did yesterday at Chapmans Peak.
Chapman's Peak drive is threatened once more by changes taking place, that
in reality are not appreciated or supported by those in Hout Bay valley and Noordhoek areas.
The biggest worry I personally had was for the threatened removal
of the day passes for those who wanted to have a picnic
/fly a plane/take a run/ride a bike/make out in a car/ on the Hout Bay side of the pass.
A tradition long held and exercised by plenty of local people, without transversing
the entire length of the mountain. All the picnic spots and particularly where
we fly our gliders are on the Hout Bay side and the removal of the day pass
would cost us R 31-00 per direction just to get up to the flying site
on an average winters day. R62-00 for the round trip!
Daylight robbery me thinks!
And so the 2000 made the walk to protest the new tollgate structure,
the proposed building of the Entileni offices on national park land and the day passes issue.
Thanks to the good few TOSSers who pitched up and made a noise
along with the joggers, hikers, cyclists and anybody who uses that area for recreation.
A good way to spend the day, petitions handed over and so nice to make some
democratic noise about things that require change, rather than sitting back
and taking a beating as per usual at the hands of the powerful.

Godaarn it's hot.
Last week peaked in the late 30"s virtually the whole week
and out in the winelands we were slapped with 40 odd degree days.
But finally it abated a wee bit on the weekend and
we were able to get some really good time up at Red Hill
practicing for this weekends up and coming TOSS Aerobatics Event 2012.
Hot was not the word as the temp peaked at 30 degrees once again
and you could literally feel the heat coming off the deck and through your shoes
With a record entry of field covering both the Expert and Sportsmans class
this looks to be a good old clash of the Titans in both classes, so roll on the weekend
and the weather and lets have some really good fun.
Some of our Sportsmans guys like Marc and Jeff could well give
a few of the Expert class guys a clap if they wanted to!
Thanks to Dave Greer and Russell Conradt for driving the Durban crew to get here,
and we are so happy to host the 7 souls that will make the journey down here.
Awesome guys, just bleeding awesome!

Notably the half pipe has been a hoot to try and figure out.
Nowhere as easy as it looks and requires some serious energy
to get right. Going to be a few falls from grace if one tries to get a little too clever with it.
Basically 3 center moves and 4 turn around moves make up the routine, which when you add in
1/2 Cuban 8's etc can become somewhat testing to complete and gives the old pip a real test
to link all the relevant moves without tripping up on your own ego...

With just a couple of weeks to go till the TOSS Aero 2012
humping South Eaters should really be the order iof the day. Not so!
Bring on the North Westers for the new year and tweede nuwe jaars days
and lets all haul our kit up to Chapman's Peak for 2 days of North Wester and
near perfect winter conditions. Rain also fell overnight on both days
so the gardens got a good old watering, but this is hardly the fare
as reserved for the traditional summer South Easter thrashing.
With most of the crew gathered for New Years day we had a good few sessions
and much the same to be said for the 2nd which delivered delicious early morning
and lunchtime sessions, before skewing out mid afternoon and then coming
back to perfection later in the day. Some nice aero practice early in the morning of the 2nd
with good few AFC guys on the slope due to Signal Hill being clouded in
and Chapman's Peak remaining open for the day.
All kudos to Mally who managed 3 sessions with the newly repaired
and sparkly Aldij and who in total, must have put in 1 and a 1/2 hours of flight
with that particular glider. Some nice foamie warbird formo practice,
BEE combat and general slope fun had by all.
Damain produced the awesome FW 190 just beautifully presented,
and to think this is just a plastic plane. Awesome!

So on we practice, with the hope that eventually we
will get the south Easters as required, or some of the up country lads
are going to be a bit surprised should we end up at Chappies and
not at the traditional Red Hill for the event.

A project I’ve been threatening to tackle for some years now. When walking through the SAAF museum at Ysterplaat a few weeks ago I can across the Vampire DH 100 on display and was once again all inspired to build one for the slopes so here we go, this time I’ve actually started so there’s no stopping now.

Phase 1 – The big cigar: