eric@uw-beaver (Eric Jul) (07/23/83)
Just to keep the record straight: The official result of the 18th World Soaring Championships in the Standard Class were: 1 Stig Oye Denmark LS-4 10780 points 2 Tom Beltz USA LS-4A 10771 points 3 John Buchanan Australia LS-4 10714 points 4 Jan Andersen Denmark LS-4 10661 points 5 Eric Mozer USA LS-4A 10499 points Note, that Mozer was fifth, and not fourth as reported earlier by jeb@eisx. The reason I feel compelled to make this correction should be obvious. I might add that both the Danish and American Teams had a very nerve- racking 25 minutes the last day from the time Beltz arrived and until Oye arrived. According to priliminary calculations Oye had to arrive no more than 25 minutes after Beltz to retain the first place. He arrived about 26 minutes after Beltz and it was really too close to call. Some frantic calculations after fetching more complete data showed that Oye had won by a very slim margin. The LS-4 factory people were indeed very happy. The younger Schneider (the 'S' in the 'LS') was present in Hobbs and seemed quite happy: 12 LS-4 in the top 13; 22 LS-4 in the top 25. Concerning wing-loadings: It is interesting to note that the winners in the Std. and Open classes both flew at wing loadings below that of their competitors: Ingo Renner in the Open class Nimbus 3 was consistently up to 40 kg (88 lbs) underweight (compared to, e.g., his 2 US competitors) at the daily weighings. Stig Oye flew in a LS-4, and not a LS-4A which meant that his AUW was 472 kg (1040 lbs) vs. the LS-4A AUW of something like 502 kg (1104 lbs) which both Beltz (2nd place) and Mozer (5th place) flew with. Both Oye and Renner believed that more water would not have been beneficial and their results give some credibility to their claims. Eric Jul eric@washington (Arpa) Danish Team Manager, WSC Hobbs '83. uw-beaver!eric