I'm getting really behind here, so I'm taking a new approach. I'm going to go on and post Mark's stuff, and will add mine as time permits. I know most everything is old news once you see it anyway, but it's good to hear from the team perspective. Opening ceremonies, I took over 700 photos, so it's just going to take me a little longer to weed through all that. But as you will here in Mark's entry, Switzerland is putting on the most fabulous Worlds you can imagine. It is just plain awesome.
Mark:
Day 7, August 8th –
OPENING CEREMONY!
Let the games begin!! Today was the opening ceremony and IT. WAS. FANTASTIC.
We still got up early to get a little bit of practice in. Driving out to the practice site was a bit of an adventure because we were told we would have to detour around the small town we have been driving through due to a large bicycling event being held in town that would close the roads. We were able to navigate a new path through a few new towns without much issue.
At 11am we packed up to head to the contest site. A traffic jam trapped Andrew and Jason for about an hour in a tunnel, but everyone was able to make it to the site in time for the opening introduction of all the teams.
This was by far the largest, most well orchestrated and best attended opening ceremonies that any of the veteran WC attendees could remember. Every country was introduced to their national anthem (35 countries, 101 competitors) and following the formal opening, our very own Joseph Szczur was asked to speak on behalf of all the competitors in taking the Olympic oath. We were all proud to see him on stage.
Following the formal ceremony there was a combined full scale and model airshow. This was lead off by a tribute to the original world championships with a replica of Ed Kazmirski’s Orion flying through the original pattern sequence. This was VERY cool to watch. They then progressed through a few more decades of pattern flying before having a full scale aerobatic demonstration. This progressed for the next few hours with out any gaps. Model jets flying in formation, full scale aerobatic gliders, 40% 3D demo, Swiss army heli demo (extremely cool) and on and on. All with a massive audience. It’s clearly how a WC opening should be done!!
Hat’s off to Bernhard Schaden, the event director and his entire team for creating an amazing event.
By the time it all ended, we were all very spent from the heat and just went back to the hotel for showers and a chance to cool down. Pizza next door was an easy relaxing dinner before planning for the next day. Jason, Andrew and Kevin took a ride to find a closer flying field in hopes of practicing in the morning prior to their flights. They had some success and Jason will fly there in the morning, while Andrew will head out early to our familiar practice site. Flight times for tomorrow are
Jason Shulman – 10:11am
Andrew Jesky – 12:08pm
Brett Wickizer - 4:42pm
Joseph Szczur - 5:09pm
The entire contest is being score electronically and will be posted REAL TIME both locally and over the internet. www.F3A-WC2015.ch under the “ranking” menu. Locally we will see the scores live maneuver by maneuver! The total score shown on the web site will be a presentation score. The presentation score will be adjusted by removing highest and lowest score by maneuver. These scores are only intended to provide an indication of how things are going.
Once all four P flights have been flown, they will run TBL on ALL the scores (putting highs and lows back in) and normalize from there.
Scores will start posting at 8:30am Sunday (Aug 9th) which is 2:30am EST. So by the time you wake up there should be lots of info available!!
Wish us luck and go team USA!