Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Flytec Meet: Day Six: Zoom Zoom

The sky was totally overcast when I woke up this morning, but the NWS said the sky would be partly cloudy by late morning. We had an interesting task that took us NW to Coleman, S to an intersection near the northern edge of the Green Swamp, back to the NW to a small town, and then back to Quest.

By launch time it was clear today was going to be a good racing day. I suited up early and was the 4 or 5 pilot to launch from my line. I entered a lockout situation at 800 feet on my tow and lost the towing bridal as I release at the same time the weak link broke. I climbed out to cloud base while I tried come to grips with the fact that I messed up my tow, lost the only tow bridal I have every owned, and lost my lucky weak link.

I slowly made my way to the start circle and decided to take the first clock even if no one else did. Several pilots tried to fake some pilots out and return, but a fair number of pilots kept on going. The day was very fast. It was so fast that I started having trouble keeping up with the heavier pilots (or pilots with ballast). I had a very fast trip to the first turnpoint and then I made the one mistake that hurt. Several pilots in front of me headed on the course line into the blue. I thought the better choice was to stick with the clouds to the east of the course line and hope the clouds eventually drifted over the course line. I incorrectly decided to follow the crowd assuming there was safety in numbers. I was wrong. We all slide down to groveling height and had to take a slow 150 fpm climb back out. The next climb was not much better. Meanwhile some of the pilots from the second start time passed over us on the cloud line I wanted to follow. Maybe I will learn some day.

John, myself, and another pilot started our final glide with 1800 feet above our best glide angle to goal. I quickly noticed that John and the other pilot were not doing very well and faded to the west towards some clouds. I started doing better than them so I kept gradually moving west while approaching goal. John and the other pilot were now very low and probably not going to make goal without another climb. I stumbled into a screamer and stopped to turn. The thermal turned into a 900 fpm climb that soon gave me 2800 feet over my best glide line. I left and turned on the afterburners. Below and behind me I could see the hordes of remaining pilots closing in. In the distance I could see that one of the pilots now in front of me was circling low short of Quest. I watched him eek is way up and start gliding to goal. I passed him just before we crossed the finish line. I later found out that John landed short of Quest.

Many pilots made it into goal today. Peter executed one of my typical moves by landing just outside the start circle. Tim had a weak link break low and busted a downtube trying to land with restricted space. He quickly replaced the downtube and almost completed the course. Ollie and Michael landed at goal and I am not sure how Mark did.

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