The flex wing results.

The rigid wing results.

The Swift result.

The blogs of pilots here:

http://skyout.blogspot.com/

http://www.goflyxc.com/

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/

With a forecast for a 10 mph northwest wind we call a 50 mile task to the southeast to the Marana airport. Some folks want to come back against the wind, but most don't.

The winds are light at launch with little dust so we are feeling good. The rigid wings get off, but they are not getting too high so this stops the flexies from launching, as the first pilot wants to wait. But Dustin evinces a desire to launch, moves to the front and takes off. This gets us going.

The lift is spotty, but adequate to get us up slowly. 55 minutes after launching I'm at 4,800', and there are lots of pilots nearby. The rigid wings have just left starting their task 45 minutes late given the poor conditions.

A few pilots head out for the first start time and I'm high enough to go with them. We've seen the rigid wings thermaling up at the hills to the east. A few of the pilot stop in light lift right at the edge of the start circle but there are a couple out in front of me heading for the hills. I follow.

After flying though the light lift at the edge of the start circle I hit 750 fpm and it continues for the next three miles as I race to get to the hills high enough to find something. I see a flex wing turning and a rigid wing behind him turning. There is a flex wing off to my right racing with me.

No luck, the flex ahead of me quits turning. The rigid wing disappears behind the hills and I come into the saguaro covered hills to get anything useful. I turn and run through the saguaro to land at the skeet shooting club. My contest is over.

At first, I hear that at least twenty five have made goal. This news seems to come about an hour after the start, which would mean that it was a much better day than it seemed at first. Thirty eight make goal.

Later Jeff Shapiro tells me that the day turned on soon after I left the start cylinder. Jeff O'Brien who I saw far below me in the start circle waited for the third start time getting high and then raced to goal to win the day.

Jeff said that he didn't stop for weak lift but watched the pilots ahead to see how well they were doing and just flew through the weaker lift pushing out a bit and waiting for 600 fpm. Larry Bunner flying a borrowed Wills Wing T2 (from Chris Zimmerman) came in fourth. His two week old T2C was the one broken by Rhett Radford early in the meet. Wills Wing is taking it back, replacing the broken carbon fiber spar and providing Larry with a brand new T2C. Quite a gesture.

Jonny and Andre were duking it out with each other over the task with Andre making sure that he covered Jonny. There was no need for him to take any risks to win the day, still he did very well.

Andre finished with two firsts, 1 second, 1 third, and 1 fourth for the meet. He won by a very substantial margin over the world number 1 (for now). Daniel Velez, a small pilot from Columbia, was able to be a bit more consistent than the local, Dustin Martin, to take third from him.

Wills Wing has a program to reward pilots who do well in big time competitions. $3,000 for first place, $1,500 for second, and $500 for third. Ron Kells gave Daniel his check during the ceremonies. Linda Salamone was the top female competitor. (Mark Fruitinger apparently beat her, but I haven't received his track log for the fifth task yet.)

Derrick Turner, an American and Venezuelan (he tried to fly in the last Worlds as a Venezuelan) was the big surprise of the meet doing very well in fifth and winning one day. Nene won one day, had two seconds, and a third, but fell down on two days. Jeff O'Brien did better every day, but didn't quite make it into the top ten. The other Jeff was just behind him.

Chris Zimmerman was in fifth place at one point but gradually fell back. Brett Hazlett had a couple of second place finishes, but didn't make goal on the last day.

The last day:

The final results:

The conditions were tricky and interesting here. We called tasks that were a bit too long for the conditions. Dustin refused to have 40 mile tasks. I loved the fact that I could make two low saves from 300' AGL, one right over Michael Williams' head. The other was witnessed by Leo Dabbur and Phill Bloom who got very excited about it. Sure you can't go fast when you have to do this, but it really enriches the experience.

I believe that pilots very much liked the competition except for the fine dust at launch, and the fact that not enough of us made it back to goal and landed on the nice green lawns (in the middle of the desert). It was a safe competition with no one hurt.

Dustin says that there are a number of ways that they could reduce the dust significantly. It is great to be able to hang out at the hotel/resort and they want us to make a five year commitment to coming back and holding a meet here. They are willing to do what it takes to keep us coming back. That will require a good word in the hang gliding community to encourage pilots to come here was a country club competition.

The word is that Frank Minnifee will let Quest Air run a Flytec Competition next year at Sheets field (which Frank's family owns) in Florida, so that is a great thing , but there may be a competition for the best dates. I'm sure that Jamie Shelden, who was the meet director here (Dustin Martin was the meet organizer along with the Arizona Hang Gliding Club) can work this out.

Everyone agrees that it is great to have a central location for the competition with a restaurant, bar, rooms, hot tub, pool, green grass, and shade. The flying is about on a level with flying in Florida in terms of strength and elevation (actually often quite a bit higher) and often the winds are lighter than we've seen this year, so we can often come back to the resort.

Jamie and Dustin did a great job. The way we did the scoring, dividing the downloading from the scoring, was a huge success, and I can see many way to improve how the scoring works without putting so much stress on the folks doing the scoring. I only had to take a half hour each night to do it after Jamie did the downloads. I expect something like this to work for the ECC in a few weeks.