Blue and Cu Could Lead to a Long Day
The second day of the contest began just like any other. Unfortunately, we are without one of the Open Class competitors who had a mechanical issue with his ship and was unable to fly. John Cochrane left Cordele and is returning home. It was good to have dinner with him and Team 98 before he left.
We had to change some of our processes to get the task out earlier. I’m trying a Sharpie and laminated map of the task area for the first time. The proposed tasks are displayed in different colors for each class. Trying to task 4 classes together gets interesting but very possible if you follow some simple rules. Avoid out and return legs or opposing legs involving other classes. Try and have all the ships come from the same approximate quadrant on final glide. It does get ugly if 4 classes come together over the field from every cardinal heading. We are not the Blue Angels! Trust your task advisors, you picked them for a reason, and they have the best vantage point, out the front window. I am lucky to have four very experienced, former US Team members on my team of advisors. In the weather that Cordele throughs at you, you need the best. With Jim Lee, David McMasters, Ken Sorenson and Greg Shugg, I certainly have a winning hand.
Speaking of weather, I’m blessed to have a great weather expert that was trained by Fernando Silva. Scott Fletcher and I have worked together several times, and he has never let me down. If he really has no idea what the weather is going to provide, he lets me know instead of throwing out a forecast that has no basis. It doesn’t happen often, but we always have a plan B in these cases.
The pilots meeting was a little less than 30 minutes, so we are making progress in not wasting the pilot’s time. We covered the standard subjects, announced the winners and heard the safety talk from Greg Shugg on traffic patterns at Cordele. Most of the time we land on runway 24 which is 4,000ft of paved surface. Not many glider pilots plan an approach that is short of the approach end of the runway. But in Cordele, that is exactly what you need. Today we had 8 gliders that did not have enough energy to get to the end of the runway where the trailers are parked. This presents a dangerous situation with one glider with low energy trying to make it through the cross-runway intersection, is being overtaken from behind. Hopefully today will be better.
For the tour of Georgia today we sent the 15/18 Meter class on the same task except for the start. They went south to Adel, west to Camilla, east to Ashburn and home. The Open Class did the same but had to go to Leesburg after Ashburn. Sports Class had a shorter task since they were the third class to get airborne. They went south to Tipton, west to Sylvester, east to Ashburn, Warwick and then home. At launch time the skies looked very soft, so the first launch was delayed. Jae Walker was number three for launch and we talked about how soft it looked. Always nice to have a sounding board when you are not sure your plan was going to work. Just a few minutes later the sky looked better, and three sniffers were launched. Soon as they were off tow, they were climbing well so we launched the fleet. Our ground crew, led by Murry Forbes, did a wonderful getting the fleet airborne in just over an hour. This is including launching the Concordia from a different runway. Nice job crew! We did have some issues when a task change was made, and the roll call was missing several pilots. A quick call on the other frequency (we launch on the CTAF freq and then switch to 123.5 airborne), quickly rounded up the strays. And all the classes were sent on the tasks. The first leg was a mixture of clouds and blue. This was the story on most of the legs. The leg to the second turnpoint I think will be the key to the top of the score sheet. There was a cloud field/semi street (winds were not strong enough to form streets), that went off course to the south of the direct line to Camilla. Going the direct path had some small Cu but the last 20 miles was in the blue. However, you could not see that the cloud field ended. Several pilots took the off-course route, and it paid off. The next leg to Ashburn was also interspersed with clouds and blue conditions. It wasn’t unusual to have long stretches of blue that seemed to have very little lift. Erik Nelson said he was a little cold in the cockpit in the blue but when he was in the sun, Cu and good climbs, got significantly warmer. As the 15/18 Meter pilots were turning for home, the lucky Open Class guys had to still do a leg to Leesburg and then home. I would have paid money to see their faces flying with the 15/18 pilots when they turned for home and they still had 30 miles to go to another turnpoint before turning for home! However, Team 98 did exactly that and made it back home ahead of a 15 Meter pilot he was flying with at the time. That made Pete’s day! In the end, we had 1 engine start and 1 landout so it was a very weak but fair test for the pilots, I hope.
In Sports Class, Kevin Anderson continues his strong performance by placing third. In second was Joe Reeves flying WD “Whistling Dixie”, and Greg Shugg is making a habit of great flying finishing in first for the second time with a handicapped speed of 54mph over 127 handicapped miles. Nice job Greg! In 18 Meter Class, Steve Vihlen finished in third. Ken Sorenson got mad at Mike yesterday so he ramped up (beating MB by over 10mph today) and finished the day in second. Jim Franz (must be eating breakfast with Greg Shugg), was in first with a speed of 61mph over 158 miles. In 15 Meter Class, Jared Granzow finally figured out where 4th gear was and made a great run to finish in third place. Second for the day, and first overall is Robin Clark from Team Florida! Winning the day was Sean Murphy with a speed of 58mph over 162 miles. Superb job folks given the very poor weather on the last leg. In Open Class, Henry Retting, another Team Florida person, finished in third with Jim Lee stuck in second. Dick Butler finished in first again (I’m going to breakfast tomorrow with DB, 2H and GS to see how they do it) with a speed of 65mph over 204 miles.
Everyone flew very fine flights that were watched by pilots all over the globe via the OGN trackers. Thank you very much for all the hard work getting those stations around the task area. I’ll find out the who in this story and share it with you later. Tomorrow is another day, and the weather forecast is for a booming day. Guess the pilots will have to put on their big girl and boy pants. That way maybe a can get a nap in before they return. Well, it’s time to say goodnight. Fly safe, stay high and return home.
Cheers,
Rich