http://lucasridley.blogspot.com/

Today was a later day, as usual for this NW facing site. My team was able to launch around 3 after about 20 other gliders. The day was called to be a good, albeit blue, day with the inversion rising to 6,500'-7,000', which is good for this site and 500 avg fpm climbs.

Lucas Ridley <<email>> writes:

Yesterday was a fun blue day. It was tough though. There was only 9 competitors that made their goals. The task was called for everyone (A, B, and C pilots) to land in the same field and there were just different turn around waypoints for the B's and A's and that field was the only waypoint for the C's. There was a big gaggle of pilots over launch and many C pilots it was there first time to thermal with a number of other gliders. As I type Dennis Pagen, Jim Lamb, and Mike Barber are going over rules of the sky with everyone because there were some close calls with the less experienced pilots. I'm sure they and everyone are learning a lot with every experience at this meet, I know I am. For example, there were seven happy pilots who raised their hands this morning that had their first xc flights yesterday.

I have a lot of respect for what Mike Barber does at Wallaby when he flies with someone to teach them. It is quite difficult and adds an interesting dynamic for the A pilots for their priority of this meet is to fly and stay with less experienced pilots. I landed at the goal field, without having completed my task because I was spending my time helping someone else, but I had a keg to look forward to that was kindly donated to help raise money to buy a landing field, as well as the pork butt and chicken that was cooked all day which was another donation to raise lz money.

Thanks to Terry Presley for taking Eric Donaldsons place on our team for yesterday which he was able to get our C pilot and himself to complete their task (2 of the 9 were on my team!), which has kept us in first. After dinner Terry conducted a seminar on restricted landing field approaches and landing.

Today is a triangle task for the A's and the B and C's get dropped off at the second and first vertex of the triangle. Hopefully, it should be a better day than yesterday with it being a little hotter of a day, but it will be blue. Here are the team scores with the new scoring system that I think we'll be adopting, where the biggest changes lay in normalizing the points for making goal for all pilots. Now everyone gets a flat 100 points for making goal, then a multiplier for their wing type and then a set amount of bonus points (instead of another multiplier) for escorting another pilot, relights, and landing at the goal LZ:

1- 1,922 - Thermal Underwear 2- 1,727 - Team Ohio 3- 1,715 - E Team 4- 1,433 - B'Low Me Again 5- 1,371 - Comp Concepts 6- 1,236 - The Pale Gliders 7- 1,131 - Team Colorado 8- 1,011 - The Leftovers 9- 916 - Mountaineers 10- 825 - Air Hogs

Since the Mountaineers have been dropping in scores because they only have A pilots, The Leftovers were in last place. The E Team has dropped from a solid second to being in 3rd by only 12 points though. Dennis' team jumped from 7th to 4th as well, but I don't think he is going to be flying today. He has offered to measure sprogs today and tomorrow which I am looking forward to since I bought my Litespeed used.

There is only one more day of competition after today and tomorrow night there is a pizza place bringing in their trailer to make hand tossed pizzas at launch with a couple kegs of beer that is on the Tree Toppers! But I know there will be plenty of donations for the lz fund.