The 5th FAI Junior World Soaring Championships will start in Rieti, Italy, July 28 and run through August 11. Mike Westbrook will be flying a Discus 2b and Kathy Fosha an LS-8. Team Captain Richard Maleady will be doing double duty as crewman with a car and the last member of the team is Giorgio Marchisio who will be helping out while the team is in Italy. The team goes to Italy July 18th and will have the gliders in Rieti starting the 20th.

Once the team has arrived in Rieti and settled in, Richard will be providing regular reports via this blog. Visit for up to the minute news of our SSA Junior World Team performance.


30 July 2007

On to Day 2 of the JWGC

You can see scores and winners on the links shown on this website. They are posted as quickly as we get them here. Both our pilots made it home safely with Mike completing the course at 130kph. Kathy was pretty disappointed with her flight, but
she did return here to Rieti. A missed start gate and an ultimate restart put her last out of the gate and flying alone. And that's very difficult in Rieti. She made the first two turnpoints--fighting several "almost" landouts. On two occasions I believe she had her gear down and her landing field chosen. I can only imagine the effort it took to continue. At 7:00 pm she made the very wise decision to to return to Rieti. And today is another day.

Today's task is an AAT with a 321km minimum and a 443km maximum. Both Mike and Kathy are out on course and flying together. I believe they are also flying with Doug Bradley from the South African team. And an unfortunate outlanding yesterday has taken Jen Bradley out of the competition. She is quite well, but I believe there was damage to the landing gear.


On the ground, things have settled down quite a bit, actually leaving time for some reporting and repairing of equipment. The leads from one of the LS-8 battery chargers broke off. Fortunately Giorgio had some replacement fittings and quickly repaired the charger. I took on the task of putting the Northrop Grumman logos on the glider trailer. Northrop is Kathy's employer and has been one of Kathy's major sponsors

Richard Maleady

1 comment:

Home Helpers of LKN and Central NC said...

Hey Richard!
Great work posting to the blog and helping the team. Really enjoying reading about your adventures. Keep it coming!!!

Glenn Holden - GH