Day 4 - a mass landout

Today everyone in the class decided to play start gate roulette. The conditions were forecast to be blue, so no one wanted to be the first to leave. The one thing that concerned me was the forecast 6 pm end of convection and we were on a 405 km task with a gate opening of 1350, and then the games started. In the end we all landed out because of the games.

I landed out about 40 km from home at 1850 needing 1 more climb to get me home, unfortunately nothing was working anymore. But my distance was good enough for 999 points on the day.

I was able to stay ahead of the gaggle most of the day and flew a lot with the 18 m gaggle where our tasks crossed. The 15 m gaggle was a furball, while the 18 m guys were much more repectful. Today I have lodged a complaint against one of the Italian pilots who insists on trying to climb up the middle of a 30 plane gaggle and continually turns inside everyone cutting them off in the thermal.

Day 3

Today was another challenging day, with 20 - 25 kt winds, but the lift was strong and there was much less spread-out of the clouds.

I was one of the first to launch at 1115 and after tow immediately climbed in 3 kts to 3500 ft and then headed upwind to the startpoint with 3 other gliders and found nothing to climb in. Eventually I decided to take are-light instead of struggling at 1000 ft like some of the other guys.

After the relight, conditions were better, but still just as windy. By the time I climbed to cloudbase I was 19 km downwind of the startpoint!

Fortunately when I arrived at the startpoint most of the 15m class was still milling around waiting to start. I had some trouble getting a good start since as soon as you circled, you were blown away from the start zone. I was finally able to start about 10 minutes after the pack and had only a couple of companions on the first and second leg. On the third leg, I met up with a bunch of 18 m guys as was able to move along quickly. On the fourth leg, I flew with some open class gliders.

In the rush to take off in the morning, I copied the task from the previous day in my computer and forgot to change the last turnpoint zone from 1 km to 0.5 km, so I missed the final zone by 150 m, thus the 50 pt penalty for the day, damn stupid mistake!

Day 2

Well day two didn't go so well for me. The weather was much like day 1 with lots of clouds spreading out and creating large holes, but to complicate things just a little more, we had 25-30 kt winds from ground up to cloud base.

After searching under a cloud for a thermal with another glider and not finding anything worthwhile, I headed for the next few clouds I looked back to see him turn into something, but kept going. As it turns out I couldn't find anything under the next clouds and he made it home.

Once you dropped below 2000 ft it was almost impossible to climb away in the thermals that were being broken by the wind.

The day could have been worse - for example two pilots on the German team landed out 4 km from the start line and to make things worse, one of them hit a deer when he landed and damaged his glider. It has now been taken back to Schleicher for repair and at a team Captain's meeting it was agreed to let him fly a different glider for the remainder of the contest.

Day 1 -part 2

It seems that for the preliminary scoring, the centre to centre distance for the turn areas was being used to calculate a speed over your task time and this was ginving some preliminary scores in the 120 km/hr range. This morning the score sheet shows the winner at 109 km/hr, so I feel better about my 96 km/hr. This also moves me up 100 points from the preliminary scores.

This morning it was raining at breakfast, but Dr Jack is showing some posibility of 4 kt lift this afternoon, so we will head to the airport at 9 am and start to rig just in case.

Day 1

Well to say that today was a tough day is a bit of an understatement! Fortunately, the 15 m class had the easiest time compared tothe other classes. We had an area task while the 18 m and Open had assigned tasks, forcing them to reach 0.5 km cylinders.

The weather was forecast to be flyable, but there would be significant spread out and cycling as the clouds shaded the ground. This caused many 18 m pilots to land out near their first turnpoint.

We had a good cloudstreet running to our first turn, then lots of shade an no cu for the second leg. I elected to back track down the first leg ( a big deviation) and then try to hit the second turn from the north.

As I entered the second turn area I met up with a gaggle of gliders that I had been with atth first turn, so things looked OK. By the time I entered the third turn area, I had about 40 minutes left to cover 75 km, so I turned short in the third cylinder and made it home 4 minutes over time.

I am really curious to see where the fast (120 km/hr) pilots went to make up the extra distance!

Opening Ceremony

Today we had the mandatory pilot's meeting at 11 am where all the teams were introduced. There are 130 pilots from 34 different countries. 36 in Open Class, 50 in 18 m class and 44 in 15 m class.

This afternoon we all go to nearby Belzig for the opening cermony where the teams will be paraded across a stage and introduced. On the stage will be a number of former World Champions who have all been invited for the ceremony.

Today, Philip Neuman from South Carolina dropped by after the meeting to say hi to Virginia and me. Philip flew in the Sports Class at Waynesville (Region 6) a month ago with us. He is in Germany on a school exchange program and has a couple of open days before he has to go home so decided to camp out at the contest.

Practice day 2

We had another great soaring day, with the best conditions and fastest speeds of the contest so far.  The open class winner was 144 km/hr the 18 m at 140 km/hr and the 15 m was 138 km/hr.

 

I posted a speed of 128 km/hr, so I am happy with that.

 

The course for the day took us under the 6500 ft outer ring of the Berlin Terminal area to the first turnpoint, then across the same wetlands on the second leg as yesterday, and finally along the high sandy pine forests for the way home.  For the practice days the task setter is trying to show us all of the areas, good and bad.

 

The wetland area has lots of little lakes and streams and for the past couple of days has required about a 30 km glide to get across it.  Fortunately we were able to climb enough before crossing that the arrival on the far side was at 3500 ft, straight into a 6 kt thermal under some good looking cu.

 

The third leg, following the sandy pine forests was the best leg with cloud base at 8000 AGL and little need to circle for about 95 km along the cloud street.  At the Elbe River, the cloud street suddenly ended and I had to deviate across the river to another cloud street where I was able to pick up 5 kts for a 2800 ft climb to get on final glide and then zip home at about 100 kts.
 

Dave