SCFR day2

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jdevorak
Posts: 273
Joined: Sun Nov 05, 2006 8:37 am
Location: Kagel LZ

SCFR day2

Post by jdevorak »

Day 2: At the pilots briefing they told the story of Greg’s heroic efforts to aide a (not really) injured pilot. They told us that there is a hero’s rule that says he cannot be penalized for his actions. They will take Greg’s daily average in points for the rest of the meet and will apply it to his Monday flight. Good rule. His start position for Tuesday does not benefit. I dropped 3 places to 33. Greg went down to 35. Start was moved earlier in the day to 12:30 with the first start clock at 1:30. Greg elected not to take the open launch before everybody. That seemed smart to me because we would have longer before things shut down in the late afternoon. I kept my place in the back of the line too. Chippy’s pilot decided not to fly and instead drive for him. Jamie said he had to take the open launch. So he was technically a wind dummy. He went on course with the first clock from 8500. Greg also decided to go from 8500 but 6 minutes after the clock. I followed. We got our next climb south of town about 8 miles away. I got back up to 8000 and continued southwest. Greg and Chippy held back to climb higher. I felt good about leading out for a change. Our next turn point was 20 miles away behind some big mountains. I had a nice climb just before it and came in over the peak. Chippy landed before the mountain. I found a climb at the turn point that got me back up to 8500. I charged ahead wanting to get as far as I could in the strong part of the day. Greg got the turn point 5 minutes later but hung on to the climb to reach 9000. I found one more slow climb half way to the second turn point and that was it for me. Greg used his extra altitude to fly over me and catch a low climb with others past the second tp. I rounded it a little later but didn’t have enough altitude to reach Greg’s thermal. I landed 23km short of goal. I did manage to go 1km past the guy I was racing most of the way. He pissed me off because he was making such big circles. I blew my landing and wacked pretty hard, but no damage except for a bruise above me knee. Greg made it in.
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jcflies
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Post by jcflies »

Thanks for the update!
janyce

"You HAVE to make it..."
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Chip
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Post by Chip »

Was nice to get a tow, but time was compressed for the start because I had to launch first. Not too worried about "sticking" (staying up), because you could see that it was good. A few dust devils showed that the air was already lifting.

Got off 3rd, behind a trike. The cart wasn't well lined up and started to skid to the right. My main focus was to let it do that and stay on the cart long enough to pickup the wheels and then let go. That ended working well and the first part of the tow went smooth.

About 800 over, I got a little above the trike and had a hard time getting back in line, eventually I got it and stayed with the trike pretty well until we started getting lift close to 1800 AGL. I figured we were up high enough that I could make it work and went to pull off, but the line would not release. I yanked on the release several times but nothing was working all that well, my heart really started racing and I gave another tug while increasing the pitch, the weak link broke and I was on my way.

So there I am nearly an hour before the start clock @ 1350. I was able to stay on top of the stack above nearly everyone, just west of the tow field. The start cylinder was only 2km away so I explored the upwind boundaries and found lift every time I went upwind. So far lift was topping out about 7k, but mostly I was hovering around 6300 - 6800.

Finally others started to come around and most of them were south and west of the tow field. I pushed further upwind when I saw a few of the leaders getting ready to stage. We went about 6km upwind and found good lift but eventually back tracked to 3km out in front of the start cylinder.

About 9 minutes before the first start, Jonny, Killa-Bee (Larry Bunner), and I had a nice thermal all to ourselves, that would take us over 8500. 3 minutes before the start, I tracked back to get inside of the start cylinder and tagged it 2 minutes after the start (1350).

With that, I glided 10k to my next thermal, only getting a 12.7 glide and averaging about 41mph (probably not fast enough). This thermal was a good one, basically by myself with most of the group well south as they started south and west of the tow field. I averaged about 400 up, with spike of 700 up, climbing to 7200, with a glide of 9km to the mountains south of Casa Grande.

Down to 4700', I find a climb east of the mountain, this is where it usually is. Most of the gaggle is slightly behind me (south and west) and climbing a little faster. We all eventually take our thermal to over 8500 and head out. I notice that most of the group is taking a parallel southerly route, I'm stupidly on my own, but doing well and slightly north of course line about 1k. Heading towards the first TP, over the town of Eloy, I can smell the oil from down below and tank up on the rising "oily" thermal that takes me back to 8k after being down to 5600'.

I can see others ahead of me near cloudbase, I speed up, but make a classic mistake of staying over green fields as I move closer to the gaggle that is now leaving as the cloud in front of me deteriorates. I was headed into the mountains that are 2km from the first TP. I incorrectly decide that the wind is from the east when clearly it is from the west. I start making a move to get over the drier terrain, but it's now shaded from the clouds just to the east that are growing.

I'm flying between 44 - 50mph, down to 3500' when I get what appears to be a life saving thermal, going up about 400'/min, but I blow it after about 6 turns and now I'm in panic mode, even though I don't need to be. I have an easy landing field below me but I'm enticed by a dust devil that is really to far away to lure me, but it does. Now I'm on the lee side of the lifting air and falling at 700' min and I lose all of the altitude I just gained in less than 2 minutes. In less than 3 minutes I lose 1500' and forced to land.

:cry:

I see another glider in the same field, retrieve should be easy, and find out it's Pedro Garcia, the Spanish champion, and one of the other two pilots that launched early. At least I'm in good company. Landing is uneventful (means I didn't bonk anything). We both just ended up looking at the sky and shrugging our shoulders.

Another 2 pilots would land in our same field before we were packed up.

Lessons:
Get to the safety of the gaggle if you notice them in time
Do not fly over green fields if you have a choice of drier terrain
Fly to the high terrain if possible
Stay with the thermal you have, don't look for something better when you are low.
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