The task and flight.

The results.

The RASP graphs were very complicated today with a "front" passing through and significant wind changes in the offing (but you're never exactly sure when it is going to happen). The wind forecasts (there are three for each hour, surface, boundary layer average, and top of the boundary layer) show west winds with south wind nearby until 5 PM when the south winds come on strong and would make it very difficult to make it back to Mt. Beauty. This forecast for strong southerly winds at 5 PM and even more later, cause the task committee to call a task with a goal to the north northeast.

The forecast for west winds gets us to the Emu launch, which was the first difficult choice. The winds at Mt. Hotham to our south are out of the north (which RASP doesn't get right) and they continue to be north westerly until 2:30 PM when they suddenly switch to the south. Of course by then we have already made all of the decisions and they are based on the winds being west and then turning south late in the day.

On launch at Emu there is a northwesterly flow, which means from the right and not straight up the launch. This causes delays and concerns that it is not safe to launch. To the south we see high lenticular clouds and roll clouds with cu's underneath coming our way. It looks unsafe in the air and the safety committee puts the task on hold.

The high clouds come over us and the launch conditions settle down a bit. We put off three free flyers and talk with Steve Gayle, one of the free flyers. He tells us that the winds are 15 mph out of the northwest and the lift is rough. But later he informs us the the lift has smoothed out and he is climbing to 10,000'. One of the other wind techs has landed and reports southerly winds on the ground.

We decided that the task is doable and set a start gate open time of 3:30 PM. The task is to go 41 km to the north (against a north westerly cross wind), come back 20 km to a turnpoint, then go back to the first turnpoint, before heading to the east northeast to goal, 108 kilometers. We are just starting at hour later than we had planned to.

I'm the eleventh pilot to launch after coming in eighth on the first task. The launch itself was fine but I get turned ninety degrees just as I got out of the slot and was headed for the trees. I banked the glider to the left and got out in the clean air.

There was just zero sink near launch after I launched so I headed north to the next spur. Oops, nothing there neither. I headed out toward the valley following another pilot. After losing 1,200' he hit something and I joined him. This thermal would take us at 400 fpm to almost 10,000'.

The wind was coming out of the northwest at 10 to 17 mph so we three pilots (including Joerg) were drifting back away from the launch and away from the edge of the start circle that was toward the first turnpoint. All the other pilots looked to be struggling and way getting low (relative to us). It looked like we the kings of the world as everyone else struggled.

Still we were eight kilometers from the edge of the start circle. I headed up wind toward the edge of the start circle but I had misjudged how fast I could get there. I still had 2.5 km to go when the start window opened. But the real kicker was the guys that had looked so low had found good thermals and were now super high. I was at 8,100', but they were much higher than that. It looked to me like they weren't going to take the first start time as they were still circling and it was getting late. I was hoping that they would all wait for the second start time and give me a chance to get high again. Of course, 8,100' is plenty high unless everyone else is higher.

Finally five minutes after the window opened they all left and I decided to go with them even though I was relatively low. Only later did I find out how really high some of them were. I should have waited and gone with Balasz, Attila and Jonny.

The race down the ridge to the north was racy enough with me following the leaders from about 4,000' below them. I found a few good thermals, but there was plenty of little stuff along the ridge line. Whenever you found a good thermal you drifted back to the east of the ridge line and had to battle back to get over it and into the good air.

I made the turnpoint with all the high guys, but I was down to 3,000' AGL. I ran the ridgeline back to the second turnpoint, but had to stop when I was 900' AGL and worked 200 fpm which turned into 700 fpm and got me back to almost 8,000'. Attila, Jonny and Balasz had started the second start time and were already catching up.

Getting back to the third turnpoint (which was the same as the first one), had me coming in low. Scott Barrett was 6 km ahead. Information from him and Belinda at the turnpoint got me to the turnpoint and then to a thermal to the east. This one was 25 km from goal and was strong enough that it got me high enough to go on final glide.

Forty three pilots made goal. The final glide was downwind. Mine averaged 48 mph.

The RASP model really made our day today. It is competing with the "local knowledge and experience" guys (who use correlations and statistical averages, sort of) for predictions about the day. It just has some much more to say, that it overwhelms them.