Larry writes:

On Saturday, Kris and I decided to test out his tow rig again at
Cullom, Illinois (southwest of Chicago). Conditions looked to be quite good with
a brisk north northwest wind turning north at the Indiana/Illinois border. We
set our sites on going to Kentucky.

Big John towed me up around 11:30 into a fat thermal and I took it to cloudbase
at 5300’. Kris meanwhile had a line break and had to relaunch with some delay.
He took off around 12:30.

We both had no trouble darting from cloud to (the cloud spacing was tight early)
as we headed SSE down the state and eventually into Indiana.

South west of Terre Haute, Indiana, a thick fast moving narrow band of cirrus
blew through from the west momentarily stopping me cold as the ground shaded
over completely. I saw it coming and headed to the south east trying to outrun
it but it was moving at well over 50mph and very quickly overran my path. I
changed gears and went into survival mode telling myself to stop for any lift.
Until this time average climbs (from thermal entry to exit) were in the
400-500fpm range with peaks in the 800fpm range.

At 3500’msl I felt a bubble and searched out a 50-100fpm climb. Thirty minutes
later, I was back at 5800’. The cirrus was now gone and the clouds were looking
robust again.

Meanwhile Kris was charging hard from behind hitting three 500-600fpm climbs to
help close the gap. He was far enough behind that the cirrus was gone by the
time he cruised through the overcast area I had encountered (timing). He spent
over an hour cruising between 5000 and 6000’ only stopping briefly to grab some
precious altitude before pushing on. I could tell he was getting close as his
radio transmissions were now clear as a bell.

The problem was that back at launch we got too amped up when we saw clouds
forming at 10:30 and didn’t take the time to put in a task. I had Franklin,
Kentucky in my instrument but he had a different waypoint. So our communications
were useless relative to our locations.

After digging out under the cirrus overcast, conditions improved markedly. I was
able to stay higher and had my best climb of the day west of Wheatland, Indiana
to 6000’. The cumulus clouds now were thinning out and there was a heavily
forested area to the south so I diverted to the south east to ensure my track
was over landable terrain. I thermaled up under the last cloud and glided
downwind landing near Velpen, Indiana. Kris took a slightly different track more
to the south and did the same landing near Somerville. We ended up with 301 and
300km respectively. Woohoo, what an awesome day.

As is his habit, John Enrietti was “johnny on the spot” pulling up to me just as
I put the last strap on my Wills Wing T III (awesome glider BTW) and soon we had
Kris and headed back. I made it home at 3:00am and spent Sunday recovering. Kris
of course went flying again (beast). Our two flights put Kris in first and me in
second place for the hang gliding world online Cross Country contests (XContest
and Leonardo). Not bad for a couple of Midwestern flatlanders, eh?

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-open/

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/league/world/2020/brand:all,cat:2,class:all,xctype:all,club:all