Hradiště test drive

The club needed my small trailer for tomorrow’s head race, to shuttle singles that are used by more people from the finish to the start. My trailer has the nice property that you can load it with a few singles without removing the wings/riggers.

So I took the opportunity to load my own single on my trailer and go for a morning reconnaissance row in Hradiště. I also had the opportunity to combine it with a work-related visit to the local aircraft manufacturers Evektor and Aircraft Industries.

My timing notes for today were:

  • 5:30 depart from home
  • 5:45 arrive at rowing club; pick up trailer
  • 6:00 depart from rowing club; drive 110km to Babice
  • 7:30 arrive in Babice
  • 8:00 launch and row
  • 9:30 backfrom training
  • 9:45 drive to finish area; park trailer
  • 10:15 drive to Aircraft Industries
  • 10:30 arrive at Aircraft Industries
  • 11:00 meetings
  • 13:30 depart from Aircraft Industries; drive 70km to Brno
  • 15:00 arrive at work; interview candidate

Woke up with the common cold at 5:20. Worked off the program. Arrived at Aircraft Industries at 10:37. I arrived at work 14:55 to interview the candidate. I was never more than 15 minute from the plan.

Here is how I arrived at Babice, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere:

Babice 001

I rowed the 14km from the launch point to the finish and back. I had programmed the race as a “course” in CrewNerd and I test drove this. It was good that I did that. I had placed the start 100m before the real start. Corrected that now, but I discovered that the upgrade of SportTracks seems to have lost my most used plugin: Google Earth Visualisation by Dobrou Extensions. 🙁

The row itself was nice. The mirror works perfectly for steering and I tried to row the ideal course. You can check here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/409295053

On our own river, I had difficulties distinguishing between the two banks in the evening light, but on the Morava river with its green, grassy banks I had no trouble. The ideal course is, according to my estimate, the shortest course that never brings you closer than 2 meters to the bank. Closer than 2 meters, and the river is too shallow and you don’t benefit from the stream.

Rowing on the perfectly flat water and checking my mirror, I really got into the mood for tomorrow’s race. Not good that I am a little sniffly, but I decided to just ignore that.

hradiste

The meetings were fine. Both companies make interesting aircraft. Here is a promo video about the L410 landing in Nepal. Quite nice, even though the engines are from the competitor: