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Tuesday June 16 and Wednesday June 17 - Arrival
This round, JWM 2009, no dutch pilot will participate. The team manager, Ben Jansen, will be at the event in a role as Score Manager. Bert Hazeborg will be present as one of the judges.
On June 16, Ben, Bert, his wife Kitty and her sister Loes met at Amsterdam airport to take the ElAl flight to Telaviv. Security is fun, especially when flying with ElAl. Many guns and security people everywhere. Ben was 'voluntered' for an additional safety screening. That meny, go down in a dark basement, only to find all you bags being tossed and checked. And those idiots have little respect for peoples belongings, electronic devises are tossed around, and all stuff, result of days of planned and carefull packing is squeesed back into the bags. All for the greater good of safety...

The flight went well, the plane, B757-200, was almost full, Ben was sqeezed at a window, the 2 seats next occupied by a young family incl. an 8 months old daughter. Fun, but crowded. Luckily, they had arranged with the purser a swap, they would move to the back, and instead two girls would return. Ben did take the isle seat. within 10 minutes, one of the girls left for yet another row, both where sleeping the whole trip. The middle seat stayed empty, which was nice.

Arrival in Telaviv was an interesting awakening with the Israeli manners. It took me an hour to obtain the rental car, first a half hour wait (2 people in line...), then another 25 minutes of aggrevation to see that a slow girl needed 3 calls to management before handing the keys to Ben (some would say logic, but it was really annoying). Bert and party did not have this trouble, he shared car with David Tappin. We landed around 17.00, it was close to 19.00 when we finaly left for the dead sea area. That was a nice 1.5 hr drive, while the sun was going down. we arrived in the dark, where a long line at the hotel reception indicated more delays and issues. it took a while, but it got sorted.

Wednesday June 17 started with a judges meeting. The diciplines where devided, and the scores management was discussed. Then of to the evnt site, about 15 km north of the hotel. It has been 15 years for ben to be in Israel, it was nice to be back. The teams that are participating where unpacking the planes. This year, the event will be not so large as usual, only 25 pilots from 10 nations are participating.
Sever peaople where test flying their jets. Many Hawks, majority in Red Arrows, Swiss colors and UK 'one million hawk hours XX159'. A very nice T-45 Goshawk joined. It is a homebuild model by Paul Dunkley, Great Brittain, and at this stage, the favorite of Ben.
Vitaly Robertus from Russia has yet managed to add even more scale details in the model, it looked really 'complete'.

After a meeting/Briefing at 17.00, followed by some last minute stuff that needed to be done, it was time for diner, for this a nice restaurant was found near the hotel. After that, Ben had another meeting with David Tappin, to prepare for the next day. (And type this report, so bedtime at 01.30. And they call this holiday... ;-) )