The flight and task.

The results

Twenty hours in four days. On this fourth day we flew the whole day. We didn't leave a possible thermal untouched today. We so rarely get to fly all day in the competition and we've had two days of flying all day in this competition so far.

I love flying after 6 PM. The thermals are so soft. I found 900 FPM after 6:30 on Sunday, day four. I found another good thermal to 7,300' after 7:30. We landed after 7:30 PM. No one made goal. We got close. Michi won the day, 8 km out.

The NSW RASP model was awesome today, see the Oz Report Oz weather page. It called the very complicated winds exactly right. Light northeast winds in the morning, turning to south, southwest by launch times, with strong southerly winds up high.

It also called for good lift (like the first three days), cu's (like yesterday), and a higher cloud base. It was truly awesome.

The flying here has been fantastic. Did I already say that? This year it is amazingly good. Tomorrow's forecast shows lift and cloud base a lot like today (strong and high).

The task committee didn't believe the RASP model's winds forecast (given the lighter winds the day before). So they called a 177 km triangle task into a 20 mph head wind. They seemed to think that they could out think the RASP looking at the isobars on the very small (and lacking detail) Synoptic charts. This is a teaching moment. Attila is using the RASP and he's on the task committee, but they didn't believe him using it either, not just me.

Speaking of teaching moments, everyone has learned that they need to get ready and launch when the launch window opens. Today they jumped right into the line and went for it. It's great to see that the pilots are not hanging back, but ready to fly.

The first turnpoint was 74 km down wind to the north northeast to the mining town of Peak Hill. Things worked out great for me, as I didn't get high (7,200') until just before the start gate opened. I'm flying without gloves, so I'd rather not have to wait around at cloud base getting cold.

There were lots of pilots around with me, and we all blasted off at the second start gate, the mandatory gate for the top twenty pilots, racing super fast to the north. I flew with Mario and Balasz. Balasz was gliding quite well. He is a hefty guy.

It only took a little over an hour to get to the first turnpoint. Just before getting there I veered off to the east to get under a good looking cu. This turned out to be the right move as we hit lift that averaged 700 fpm to 8,400'. Lots of pilots spotted us and took advantage of that lift.

The next turnpoint was southwest, into the 20 mph southerly wind. We all bunched up running into the wall of on rushing wind. Thankfully the lift was strong. I was able to go out in front a couple of times and get lower than most, and sniff out the lift. It took two and a half hours to make 50 km. My mean L/D on glide was 9.4.

We were still pretty much all together (about fourteen pilots) at the Trundle turnpoint. We came at it from 6 km due north of it by the time that we got nearby. We got to over 9,000' getting to the turnpoint, with strong lift near cloud base.

It was 5:40 by the time we got to the Trundle turnpoint. The last leg was 54 km into the wind. Pretty late in the day for that. The lift past the turnpoint was weak and the sky was turning blue.

Down to 2,000' AGl 11 km south of Trundle I came in the bottom of the thermal that was being marked by the pilots ahead of me. As I approached the thermal, the headwind turned into an eight mph tail wind. The thermal was sucking all the air into it.

This thermal was strong at 6:30 and we got to almost 8,000'. A few minutes before that I thought we were all going to be landing soon.

Another thermal showed up at 7 PM and we all got back up again to almost 7,500' in this last thermal of the day. It looked like we might make it after all. No one would have believed this earlier in the day.

But it was just too late and the lift was over. We all landed at about 7:40 PM.

No one made goal.