Open flex wing results, Rigid wing results, Sport Class

Blogs from here: Jonny Durand, Jamie Shelden, Tom Lanning, Ben Dunn, and Linda Salamone

6:50 PM: The forecast was for weak lift, a low cloud base, and a light wind out of the south. We called a twenty three mile task to the north to Masse and a fifteen mile task for the Sport Class both starting an hour later than has been the norm here, with the first start window opening at 3 PM, launching at 1:45 PM. The sky was overcast all morning and well into the afternoon as the temperature rose.

At 2:30 PM, forty five minutes after the launch window opened and half an hour before the first start time, I was the first (and only) open class pilot to launch, right after two Sport Class guys. This was rather late in the launch window for no one to be launching.

I pinned off at 1,300' under very soft looking skies. The two Sport Class guys who held on for higher tows slowly floated down and landed as I held on to the light lift (11 fpm) at the west end of the runway to 1,600'.  But soon I was down to 800' back near the airstrip.

I found 96 fpm at a small tree line and worked it for the next twelve minutes to 2,100' and cloud base. The clouds were very diffuse, so it was hard to tell if there was a real cloud base.

I could have left then as it was 3 PM but I was the only pilot in the air, and given the very poor conditions, I wanted to up my chances of staying up, so I headed back toward launch to wait for other pilots to start launching.

Three pilots got towed up and I joined them at 1,700'. We drifted down wind. They continued to drift, but we weren't getting up as high as I had been and I didn't want to leave with just these pilots, so again I headed back to the airstrip to the south.

It was now 3:15 PM, and some pilots were being towed up at this second to last start time.  Down to 400' it looked like I would have to relaunch, but I found some lift and slowly worked my way back up again to join the pilots who had been towed up recently. Finding 60 fpm I worked back to 1,600'.

I was now, after over an hour in the air, just north of the airstrip and with a dozen other pilots working broken lift. Of course, now with all these pilots around it was hard to stay in the small cores, like I had been able to do when I was alone.

We weren't getting high, In fact, we were now at 1,300' and working 18 fpm. I could see Dustin and Jonny around me, as well as the rigid wings.  There were a dozen pilots in this general area, just northwest of the airstrip about a mile.

An hour and a half into the flight and now back over the air strip at 1,300' I saw Dustin doing wing overs and then landing. A few minutes later, Jonny did the same thing. I noticed more than half the pilots that I had been flying with a few minutes earlier were landing, although they didn't seem to do it as much on purpose as Jonny and Dustin.

I called Belinda on the radio and she went over and asked Dustin what was going on. Dustin said that he landed in order topget a new tow to a higher altitude than what we were getting in the lift, and then go on glide to get outside the start circle.

I could have landed then also, but I had just spent the last hour and a half staying up and giving the pilots on the ground a good show. I didn't want to land.

I headed down wind as almost all the pilots who had been around me were now gone, most of them landed. I headed down the course line, already low again at 1,100'. I saw Sunny and Peter circling over a set of farm buildings and a manure pond.

Unfortunately there was no lift there, and after all that struggle, an hour and forty minutes in the start circle, I landed two miles out from the air strip.

The "smart" pilots who landed and got towed back up again, were able to go on glide and come over a bunch of us high to hook up with a few other pilots who were now turning in the light lift. One was even towed high over the bunch of us who landed just before a large forested area.

7:28 PM: It looks like the day will be hardly worth anything. The rumor is that Linda Salamone ands Mark Frutiger went fifteen miles, but no report yet. Presently Jonny is winning with 34 points (out of 1000), with Dustin two points behind him for the day. Those of us who landed in the five mile start cylinder get 18 points.

The Sport Class winner, and every one else, gets two points and the rigid wing winner gets seven points.