After long trips, flat tires and late arrivals more than 100 pilots from 15 nations came to Sopot. The Sunday windy weather was helping the organizators by keeping the patient competitors around the registration office.

Monday 16.08 Day 1



    Beautiful sky but NE wind increased at take off and the 42 km triangle Task 1 was cancelled.
    Some pilots went sightseeing Plovdiv, other soaking in the hot mineral water pools in Bania and etc.


Tuesday 17.08 Day 2

    Despite the suspicious north wind from the mountain in the morning, the sun rised and conditions normalized.
The sky was blue and few healthy cumuluses were indicated possible lift to up 2500 m amsl.



a 68.3 task along the mountain range was set in order to satisfy more finishing pilots (no matter the day looked for more)
60 out of 105 pilots made the goal and the first made good speed of 32 km/h



    Many pilots were happy from the conditions, race, and kilometers...
Of course there were also collapses to wake up pilots and remind them to aware the Balkan conditions.

Results from Task 2


18.08 Day 3

    After the yesterday's easy task along the mountain ridge came the apetite for crossing the valley and flatland flying. An interesting 86 km task around the Rose Valley was set.
The day was with less cumuluses compared with yesterday but the early climb of wind dummies gave hope for good conditions.

 

    After the opening of start window at 13:40 two gagles formed and made the first turnpoint along the mountain range. The next turnpoint was back to west and when the moment for crossing the valley came, the rushing leaders bombed down soon. The next pilots saw their mistake and tried to gain as much height as possible before the crossing of flats. Some sucseeded and some made it even smarter to return back a little along the main mountan and then to start the crossing of the valley. The NW wind was making falling winds along the second turnpoint (predicted by task setters but also helped for the long glide to third turnpoint on little mountain dividing two big flats.
    Some lower flying pilots experienced some head S wind when trying to get the third but some managed to get high enough and continue further.
    The lates group agonized around the TP4 and Johannes Damish (AUT) and Klaudia Bulgakow (POL) became 1st and 2nd by making 76 km.
    Despite the lack of pilots in goal the day and task were interesting because with the micrometeorology of the Rose Valley it was fast backwind flying most of the time and also it was a good lesson for the strong pilots to learn when to rush and when not.
Godfrey called the task a "a female task" because many of the girls made it better then men. Finaly everybody was happy and mostly the Alpine nations because of the flatland lessons.

Task 3 Results


19.08 Day 4    

    Despite some pilots flew in the morning, the task was cancelled due to forecasted strong winds.
    Competitors went flying on other sites (some made 20-30 km XC, some enjoyed 2 hours sunset soaring at the top of the mountain), sightseeing Plovdiv, bathing in the mineral water etc.



    In the evening Sopot municipality organized a noisy party which probably resulted in tired pilots in the morning again (a kind of Bulgarian competition tactic :-)



   


20.08 Day 5



    Today 78 km task along the mountain range was set. After easy start with strong and smooth thermals most pilots made first turn point but on the way back they had to fight with head wind. Many of the best competitors made the second TP with unsufficient hight and landed very short of goal.
Urban Valic, Josef Lanthaler and Vasily Pavlov managed to prove that the task was possible.

The results from Task 4


21.08 Day 6

    May be it was pitty that in one of the stronges day we had the smallest task, but the organizers wanted faster retrieve and results. The task was 55 km race along the mountain range but still didn't missed interesting moments.



Pilots enjoyed 2700 m cloudbase, strong thermals everywhere, one opened reserve (after 90 collapse) etc. Some strong pilots flew fast and risk too much which caused unpleasant bomb out shortly before the finish.



56 pilots in the goal with spectacular race between the first two: Urban Valic (Slo) and Karlo Bonacic (Cro).



Task 5 Results

.............................

The final winners after 4 tasks are:
1. Urban Valic (Slovenia)
2. Orlin Dimov (Bulgaria)
3. Karlo Bonacic (Croatia)
Final Official Results

and among women:
1. Keiko Hiraki (Japan)
2. Karen Herrmann (Germany)
3. Elizabeth Rauchenberger (Switzerland)
Final Official Female Results

The Race data base from the competition is available at:
prePWC_Sopot2004.mdb

The scoring of all official results was made by PWC99 formula with 7 km minimal distance.

The scoring of the tasks by GAP 2002 (7km, 40km, 10%, 1h30min) comes as follows:
Task2, Task3, Task4, Task5, Final Results, Final Female Results