Closing ceremony, and after, from the crew dude

Hi all!

The closing ceremony happened in glorious sunshine (why couldn't we have had this weather earlier?) at 1000, with quite a few people nursing sore heads from the previous evening's party, but everyone seemed to be present, in one form or another.

Prizes were awarded to the first ten places in Club Class, the first eleven in Standard Class and the first five in 20m 2-seat Class.  The first three in each class of course had podium finishes.

Then the Team Cup was awarded, again with podium finishes, and short but effective speeches were made, all in English.

All the results may be found at www.wgc2014.fi/results which contains the complete set of results for all days.

It's been a fun competition, and I think Eric learned heaps from it.

The FAI flag was lowered, and presented to the captain of the team whose nation will host the next FAI World Gliding Competition, Lithuania.

After that there were the usual chaotic scenes of infrastructure being dismantled, and airfield operation slowly returning to normal.  But Eric had arranged for me to have a ride in the Duo Discus XL (which hadn't competed), so that I could sample the local airspace and flying conditions.

Finland certainly has lots of forests everywhere, and even more lakes.  But there are also quite a few landable paddocks (although there might be some areas where these are quite sparse), and obviously Eric had become adept at selecting these.

The Finland summer can also generate strong lift, and we (I went with one of the Finnish instructors) found lift up to 7 knots, to around 6000 ft.  And today wasn't even necessarily the best day of the season!  Cu's everywhere, although the day went a bit blue towards the end.

The Duo Discus XL is certainly a nice beastie, handles not too differently from a single-seater, difficult to compare it with the Arcus as we flew the Arcus a year ago, and I don't necessarily remember everything about its characteristics, and it goes when you want it to.

Tomorrow Eric and I head out from Helsinki.  Our job tomorrow is packing! (groan)

Cheers!