Arrivals with GPS Rings Quievrain 15/04/2023
Last Wednesday, the training flight from Quievrain was canceled due to bad weather.
The weather forecast for Sunday, April 16, 2023, was not very good either, so we decided to drive ourselves.
We looked closely at the weather maps on Friday and saw that Saturday would be mostly sunny, but with a rain zone over Quievrain and some extra cloud cover there.
Initially, I thought a release at noon would be possible.
The Zeeland’96 department was also in Quievrain, so we had to take that into account.
This morning, we basketed the pigeons and headed for Quievrain, arriving around 10:20 a.m.
The weather was good all along the route until about 25 km before our final destination.
Upon arrival, it had stopped raining half an hour earlier, according to the men from Zeeland’96.
The sky also began to clear in Quievrain and they started preparing the baskets for release.
The Dutch released in three groups between 11:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. After half a lap, the pigeons headed home.
Then it was time for the racing team here to take to the skies.
Eighty-one pigeons were released at 12:10 p.m. for a 111 km race, with a temperature of 15 degrees and a calm NNE wind.
Once again, we had to wait and see how they would fare.
When I got home just before 2:00 p.m., none of them had arrived yet. I had estimated that they would fly for 1 hour and 45 minutes, as it was a small group and there was a headwind.
At 2:00 p.m., the first three arrived together. It took a while before they were all clocked because another group arrived with a few hens.
The start was given, and they followed each other nicely. Within 20 minutes, 46/81 were clocked.
After 1 hour, 73/81 were clocked, and then it slowed down a bit, with only the occasional pigeon arriving. At the end of the day, four were still missing, but they will return home tomorrow.
Of course, we had two pigeons with GPS rings.
Once again, the information was surprising.
The blue one kept up his pace well and covered the distance in 2:03. That’s a bit slow, but when you see that he only flew 13 km too far and kept up a good pace, it’s more a case of flying slower. Whereas last weekend the pigeons still touched Ghent, now they are turning off earlier and keeping up a much better pace.
If we take the second GPS pigeon (red), which arrives home half an hour later than the first GPS pigeon, it decides to take a different route 23 minutes after release.
In total, it flies not 111 km but 141 km, which is 30 km extra compared to the straight line.
Since someone also asked me about the speeds and altitudes, I am including these as well:
Maximum altitude blue GPS: 142m
Maximum speed blue GPS: 1337m/m
After 1 hour of flying: 59km
Maximum altitude red GPS: 177m
Maximum speed red GPS: 1441m/m
After 1 hour of flying: 49km
For the sake of completeness, here is an overview of the arrivals:
