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04.10.2018
Why did I stop and search for lift?


Larry Bunner asks:


Could you have glided from Mobile into goal? What was your final
glide performance when you did leave?


Let's look at the final glide on the last day of the 2018 Santa
Cruz Flats Race.


Five of us left the thermal south of Mobile close together. Just
looking at Zac, Dustin and I, Zac left at 15:30:44, Dustin 18 seconds later at
15:31:02 and I left at the same time as Dustin, but as I'm using my Flytec 6030
IGC tracklog with five second intervals I chose the 15:30:58 track log point to
be the time I left. Zac was at 7426', Dustin at 7558', and I was at 7270'.


After a 10.8km glide I started circling at 4.5 km from the edge of the 1.5 km
goal cylinder. My 6030 was showing goal at 7:1 (this is to the edge of the goal
cylinder) and my then current L/D was 5:1. I was facing a 17 mph head wind. 
My mean L/D since leaving the thermal was 9.1 (mostly perpendicular to the east
wind) and my average ground speed was 35 mph. I had flown 10.8 km and I was at
3359' or about 2,000' AGL. I'd flown for 11:31 minutes. I started circling at
15:42:29.



Zac was close to the location where I start circling at 15:39:55 or about two
and a half minutes before me. He was at 3,712' or 353' above the altitude I
would be at when I got there. He was facing similar winds. His mean L/D since
leaving the thermal was 9.4 (close to mine) but his ground speed was much higher
at 43 mph. He'd flown for 9:11 minutes and covered 10.6 km.



Dustin came to the same location at 15:40:40, forty five seconds after Zac and
not quite two minutes before I got there. He was at 3453' or about 100' higher
than I would be at that point.



Both Dustin and Zac kept gliding toward goal from this point. I felt the lift
and turned in it then scooted north less than a kilometer to find even better
lift.


Zac made goal from there with a mean glide of 8.3 at 50 mph ground speed down to
1898'. He lost 1,814' and arrived at about 600' over the ground and still had to
glide to the airfield center 1.5 km away.



As we discussed before in the previous article the wind was much lighter below
2,000' AGL.


Dustin made goal from that point with a mean glide of 16.6 at 42 mph ground
speed. He arrived at 2538'. He lost 915' and arrived at about 1,200' AGL.



It is pretty clear that because the wind died down to 5 to 7 mph below 2,000'
AGL I would have made it into goal by just continuing to fly straight to goal
and not have taken the last thermal. At the time I was not quite low enough to
see the head wind component on my Flytec 6030 drop to 5 or 7 mph instead of 17
mph which is what I saw. From the contours of the nearby hills it appeared that
I was in a venturi and I had experienced the high winds throughout the flight. I
had no desire to come up short.


After climbing in my last thermal to 5934' I flew to goal against a 15 mph head 
wind with a ground speed of 33 mph. My mean L/D was 13.5.




https://OzReport.com/1538666085
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