Contest day 1

Contest day 1

Sorry, a little late with the blog. We had to drive into Toowoomba last night to pick up Vicki’s friend Anita who flew in from Melbourne.

Day 1 looked really good, but for most people it wasn’t quite as good as it looked – I thought that we could sue the clouds for false advertising – looked like they had 6-8 knots but you could only find 3-4 knots.

Cloud base was just on 4500ft, and thermals were stronger up closer to cloud base, so I decided that staying in the top half of convection would be a good idea – so a working height band from 3000-4500 (mainly 4200ft).

A 2.5 hour AAT and I needed to be back by 3:30pm, so started about 12.50pm. Good streeting but you had to be careful which street you followed, as they were cycling a lot. Brad Edwards called up to say that he had outlanded – I played it a little cautious as I flew past his landing area.

To get deeper into the first sector I had to move across a hole to get to a good looking street to the east. Arrived there with good height but didn’t find much (maybe I should have flown further under the clouds?). Progressively getting lower I got rained on – not fair. Still no climb and quite low now, I turned around and headed back under some cu. At 700ft AGL I thought my comp was over, but found a weak climb on a small hill – reasonable paddock close by. After a grovel I finally climbed out and was joined by little gaggle which progressively got bigger as we continued to climb. I led the gaggle along with Alan Barnes and Dave Shorter.

A few good climbs but we all played it cautious over the scrub so took a few 3-4 knot climbs also. The gaggle finally split up at the top sector as some people turned for home and we each made different decisions on the best clouds to fly under.

Fairly uneventful except I never did get a good climb, only 3-4 knots. Final glide was a little fraught, lost most of my safety margin but picked up a little under the last couple of wispy clouds. One Duo Discus didn’t quite make it and landed short by a couple of km. I think the bugs on the wings weren’t helping.

A few people didn’t have a low spot and ended up 10kph faster than the pack. Mile Gore-Brown won my class at 114kph, Peter Trotter at 110 and then me at 101 – a big points difference, but it could have been a lot worse.

Miles was the fastest across all classes for the day, and only 1 or 2 in each class getting the higher speeds.

Vicki has found a solution to the photo issue so hopefully we wil have some photos to put on the blog tonight.

Today looks much the same as yesterday, 5000 ft under cu, possible thunderstorms, and we have a fixed tasks of 338km out to the wet country to the west.