News 2012 World Gliding Championship, Uvalde Texas

[80mileshigh]

Here's an alternative (or compliment) to the Olympics for the air-minded.

The World Gliding Championship, held every two years, is starting this weekend at Uvalde, Texas. Teams from 24 nations will duel it out over the desert, flying tasks of several hundred Kilometers at speeds of up to 300kph.

Home page here:
http://wgc2012uvalde.com/

Many of the teams have their own websites too as listed here, and live tracking of the races will be provided through the homepage.

I realised I had a glider shaped space missing in my life earlier this year so I'm pretty excited that the WGC is happening now.

This is kind of like the Tour de France but with airplanes!

 

[Fisherman]

:thumbup: That's something! I'm a pilot as well but have never flown a glider. Any more photos?

 

[80mileshigh]

:thumbup: That's something! I'm a pilot as well but have never flown a glider.

I'm not a real world pilot but after seeing sailplanes in flight earlier this year I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about them (and 100+ hours in condor). Hopefully I can take some gliding lessons before too long.

Any more photos?

The photo of gliders on the grid is from the gallery of the WGC home page linked above. They also have some nice photos and pilot profiles on their facebook page (I don't use facebook but much of the WGC content is public). For a general source of gliding images soaring cafe is a nice site.

I also strongly recommend the film The Sunship Game which documents the efforts of two very different pilots to win the US nationals in 1969 at Marfa TX. It's a forgotten gem of a film: