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Jeff O\\'Brien\\'s blog

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Friday, July 4th

The task and the flight.

Despite coming in 21st on the last day Scott Barrett held onto his lead and won the pre-Worlds. The last day had very little spread in points between 5th and 25th. These were all guys that made goal quickly, so they all got about the same points.

Scott headed out in the first gaggle at the first start window. They all had a relatively bad start having to go back 1.6 km to get inside the exit start cylinder. Those of us who took the second clock only had to go back 1 km and we came back right into the lift and got up quickly, losing no height overall. Then we found very strong lift just before the first turnpoint, west down the Laragne-Chabre ridge line at COL SAINT JEAN.

Most of the first start gaggle headed east back down Chabre, while a number of us in the second start time jumped to the ridge to the south, more on the course line, at SOMMET DE LA PLA, and found strong lift to 7,400'. We could see four of the pilots with the earlier start just above us.

Next was a 16 km glide across the valley to LA GACHE. The glide was reasonable, but the lift was a bit weak at the hill side under the cliffs after we got across the valley. The lead gaggle was just over our heads, maybe two hundred feet. They had already taken the turnpoint 3.5 km to the east.

We finally got some good lift and were able to head to the turnpoint as the lead gaggle headed toward Sisteron. We worked weak lift coming back from the turnpoint and then just had to head off toward Sisteron also without getting high. We could see the lead gaggle turning in weak lift just past the town. We flew right over the citadel.

The lead gaggle was slow, very slow. Scott would later mention how even with Andreas and Mario Alonzi, they just weren't taking any chances and he had resolved to stay with the gaggle. Balazs (who was in second place) had caught up with them starting at the second start time.

We started turning on the north side of a valley on the lee side of a small ridge (the wind was 5 mph out of the northwest) here the lead gaggle had just been wasting their time. The lift was poor yet again. After gaining a mere 400' we moved over to the south side of the valley on the north facing hill sides. I saw a Gryphon vulture (gray back), circling in the valley near the hill side, but he was way below me and I felt that the hillside would be a better and kept going.

The Gryphon came over under me as I climbed up, and I changed the direction of my turns to match the Gryphon's, and we climbed out together. After climbing 1000' the Gryphon moved over a small ridge line to another face. The lift stopped so I went over and joined him for another thousand foot climb. He was right under my wing.

I was up high enough now to move over on top of the ridge line to get to the turnpoint. There were earlier starting pilots just ahead under clouds just beyond the turnpoint, the one and only cu's that we would see during the task, I jumped over to clouds called Zac and the Jeff's to come over and we climbed out fast to 7,400'.

It was a twelve kilometer glide to Malijai, a village before the plateaus that we were about to get up on on the way to goal. We came over the town and then up on the treed hillsides before the plateau. It was a search for lift on the hill sides and we didn't get that high. In front of us were two large plateaus covered with lavender fields. The mountain flying competition had turned into a flatland competition.

There were about half a dozen of us together and we worked the weak thermals to get across the plateau and jump to the next one. We could see Bruce Kavanaugh keeping up with us, but two thousand feet below. Jeff Shapiro had been above me but missed the lift on the hillside of the plateau and was soon working low with Bruce.

We climbed to 5,600' and jumped across the creek to the second plateau, found weak lift and climbed to 4,900', not enough to get to goal, but plenty to make the turnpoint east of Valensole. I found lift at the turnpoint which encouraged the others and just drifted in it toward the goal field, a sailplane port past Puimoisson. Climbing to 5,000' (2,500' AGL) it was an easy downwind glide in to a very nice air field high up on the plateau.

Attila Bertok started third and was very fast winning the day. Scott Barrett started on final glide with 600 meters below the glide line and Balazs went with him. Scott almost put Balazs on the ground 4 km from goal.

Jeff Shapiro got low in the valley between the first and last plateau and worked with ten other pilots including Robin Hamilton and Bruce to try to get up. Only he and one other pilot were able to make it out of that hole and make goal.

Jeff O'Brien was sixth in overall time to goal. He moved into tenth place overall. I was twenty fourth, three after Scott, and moved up to 17th place. Zac also made goal just ahead of me.

The US team was very cooperative and very often flew together. I think that this may be a first for the US team. The two Jeff's, Zac and I were very close to each other for most of the flight on this last day and flew together on many days.

The organization of the meet was excellent. There were twenty people helping with launches. The scorekeeping was very efficient with little waiting around to download your GPS even with 117 pilots and the scores were published almost immediately on the web.

The downsides include poor launch conditions under some wind conditions and the difficulty of calling tasks when cu-nimbs were forecasted for the mountains. The dodgy weather was unexpected.

Laragne is a great place to fly. Very open with lots of variety and challenges as well as many large fields to land in if necessary. The town is romantic and charming and has a great market day on Thursday. There is a lot of history to take in in the area, great cycling, mountain climbing, rock climbing (see Jeff's pictures), and swimming in the creeks. The wife and family will enjoy themselves here much more so than some other places that we go to where the flying is great.

Last day at goal:

Overall: