Flytec - Day Three

After landing short yet again, I found myself quoting Dan MacMonagle, “Someone take this glider away from me; I don’t deserve to fly it!”

We had a late afternoon task to the airport at Avon Park. The lift and wind was light and there were low clouds; the kind of conditions I like to fly in. I was barely over the trees on tow when my tug pilot started turning in a weak climb. We soon had gliders from all directions heading our way. I got waved off and had an easy climb to cloud base in smooth lift.

I played around the airfield for a short time and then started heading to the starting line, a circle 10,000 meters from Quest. I planned to leave early and was in a good position to do so but for some reason I decided to follow the gaggle back upwind to get a better start time. That was a big mistake. I soon found myself low fighting to stay in the air. At least I was alone and enjoying the flying. By the time I was back “in the game” I had drifted east almost to Route 27. Instead of heading towards a nice line of clouds on the way to Wallaby, I pushed west to get back on course line. I didn’t find any lift until I was low and drifting over trees with no LZ. I used up my altitude getting back to a safe LZ and soon landed in pasture field south of a quarry.

A few minutes later David, a pilot flying from Wallaby landed in the same field. A big bull was not pleased with all this commotion and started running our way bellowing and snorting. Lucky for us, he stopped and didn’t move much while we broke down our gliders. I knew we had a long walk in front of us. There was a nice hard-pack dirt driveway along the fence line that connected to a paved road about 1.5 miles away. I just hoped the paved road was a public road and not a private road owned by the quarry. My driver Julie called and let me know that she would be able to drive in to get me but had to wait for the plant foreman and the sheriff. The sheriff? I didn’t want that so I quicken our pace. We managed to walk out before the sheriff arrived. The personnel at the gate were pleasant and were just following the standard protocol for such incidents. We briefly talked and the headed home. I found out later that several other pilots had conversations with sheriffs and unhappy landowners, so I guess I got off lucky.

Most of the New England crew didn’t do very well today. I’ll just say that Dave, Peter, and I made an emergency DQ run this evening to sooth our bruised egos! I think many pilots made goal today and it hurt not being there. For some reason, I don’t fly well during competitions. It may be the hectic pace or more likely the fear of bombing out if I don’t join and out-perform the gaggle. However, chasing pilots around the sky that are not necessarily any better than me is not a sane strategy. I knew I should take the first start today instead of turning around with 15 other pilots that went back for a better start time. I later talked to John Chambers, one of the few pilots that kept going, and he did very well leaving early. It goes against conventional wisdom, but I am going to start flying my own game and see how that works out.