Some pictures from the 1990' Nationals of the USSR, First League.
I was honored to fly there in Open Class for the Leningrad Team (St. Petersburg now).
National Championship took place from June 28 till July 8, 1990 in town Orel. Orel is a mid size town
located south west from Moscow.
We got there by train 3 days earlier as we had to get the gliders for the team. Gliders were provided
by Orel's club.
In Leningrad Team were:
Inga Ivanova - Standard class (Jantar St. 3)
Alexander Kudriavcev - Standard class (Jantar St. 3)
Mark Kotoff - Open class (LAK-12)
Igor Balandin - team tactical manager and coach
We had to pass navigation in the area test and fly our gliders to get everything working properly.
We also had a navigation flight in Wilga-35.
Day 1
- Rough Landing on the field near
"Zolotarevo" village, emergency one. The same picture in 72 dpi (10Kb),
200 dpi (57Kb) and 300 dpi (112Kb). This is a small
reminder on how not to land in case of real emergency and do not let yourself to run out of landing options
as it happened here with me. It was not exactly the day I could be proud of, although I didn't break
anything thanks to the rugged construction of the glider and unbeatable Blanik's
landing gear used on LAK-12.
- Starting clock shot
(1000 meters altitude). You can click on the picture to see the blow-up and
here for a blow-up with explanations. Nationals were @ "Pugachevka" Airport, about 8
kilometers South from the Orel City (it is an Airport, with about one hundred gliders and about
20 Wilgas, not to mention a few Antonov's AN-2
and a huge field). They have their own Hotel, Glider Repair Shop, Diner (rare occasion in Former USSR),
Bania (where else one could get rid of the stress), water supply for the whole glider's parking lot (you
wouldn't have to run with the bucket to fill up the water tanks, just use the hose) and tonns of other
things you can't even imagine.
- Pugachevka Field (1999)
This picture was sent to me be by Vladimir Bessarabov on April 8, 2000
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