2019 1-26 Championship, Day 3

2019 1-26 Championship, Day 3

Low Performance Winner, First Contest Day, Bill Snead

Great. Well, first of all I want to thank the 1-26ers for allowing for us fly with you. It's really great to be out here and it's because of ya'lls generosity that we could be with you, so that's number one. I want to talk a little bit about these tasks where you can select turn points at your will. 

There's two or three things that I think about. First is kind of follow the weather and then find the turn points. Don't necessarily think you can land it in advance. So, you need a flight computer that has the turn points, get up there and take a good look at the sky, and head for those turn points. 

Number two, I say for our kind of gliders to be very, very conservative about getting downwind ... particularly toward the end of the day. So, be very conscious of the wind and stay upwind, but particularly if you can go upwind up a street, that's always the key. You're getting the wind energy plus the soaring energy, so that all worked yesterday. 

The third thing is being able to switch gears, and yesterday about half way out I got down to about eight thousand feet, so that was really low. So, I usually use a rule of thumb for every thousand feet I'm up above the ground is where I select my thermal. So, if I'm six or seven thousand feet above the ground, I won't stop for anything under six or seven knots, but you got to change that as you get down to two or three thousand. And a lot of times we have cycles or maybe there was a thunderstorm in that area that you went through yesterday or something. 

Yesterday, you were flying along. We were working seven knots. Pretty soon you looked away down to ten thousand feet. So, what happens? Sometimes switch gears mentally and there is a lot of difference between climbing two knots all the way around and being down at eight hundred feet going a half knot on one side and down on the other. Essentially you could spend hours doing that, so ... pause there at the altitude at two or three thousand feet for almost anything that you can go all the way around. And that happened yesterday and it paid off. And a lot of times you do that a couple times around and that two knots will turn into eight. So, don't leave that lift below a 1-26er or a Pee Wee below about three thousand feet. Okay. 

1-26 Team Winner, First Contest Day, Philip Du Plessis 692

This is a team trophy, so thanks Steve. A little bit about my flight. So, I started and the first turnpoint that I hit was an illegal turnpoint. I think we have a Tony Benson in our club from years back.

Who learned all the rules of soaring by breaking the rules, so I think I'm learning them the same way. Anyway, I went to... Next turnpoint was Biplane Ranch and was bumping along at twelve thousand and thought from the safety briefing, I'm supposed to be looking for places to land the whole time. And I'm like where are these western thermals I hear so much about? Anyway, but I happen to be in a nice lift line that didn't go up but, didn't go down. Was over Biplane Ranch, so I just looked on the computer and Chilili was a little bit further on, so I just kept going. Then, I turned around and I went to Sandia East I think and then down to somewhere south.

And then I kept coming back. I hit a few other places including Wagon Wheel and made it home. I got up to seventeen in the end. I actually made it. It was one heck of a ride and I loved every second. I know why I'm here now. It was definitely worth taking vacation time to be here. 

So, I learned three lessons. One, to be patient. I was near the back of the grid and it took me over an hour just to get above release altitude. I don't know why I struggled so much, but it was really tough. The next thing is obviously don't use start waypoints as waypoints. Thank you to the rules committee guys that helped and I actually emailed Tom last night and he chose an alternative, Moriarty and that helped my score a little. Then finally, I left over almost an hour of time on the table. I completely forgot about the time and trying to figure out what time was my real start and which start should I count. I was thermaling around here so often, I was in and out of the turn circle so many times. Anyway. Thank you.

1-26 Championship Solo Winner, First Contest Day, Irn Jousma 609

Okay well, I had a little issue to start yesterday. My flight computer decided not to work. So, I pushed buttons for a while and I couldn't resolve it in the air so I pulled the boards and landed right after the gate opened.

Dumped my old task which was a bunch of points with suckers around it and put in a real simple one and it worked, so then I took off again and started about 2:40 I think? And my idea was to get to high ground and run up and down the mountains and I had a hard time getting to Tajique which is the first turn point I used and ... but after I turned around it was just wonderful. The run North was spectacular. Probably was less than an hour to Gallisteo so, then I had to turn around and get back and, my idea was to get all the way back to Tajique but I couldn't, the day started to soften on me so I chickened out and turned at Chilili and came in so ... that was about it.

Weather

Right now, the winds are pretty much out of the south, but the forecast is for southeast winds 10 to 20 miles an hour, so Mother Nature could change that for us. If she does, we may have to do the elephant walk. But, probably, gridding for an east departure's a good bet. 

We will make right turn-outs to keep you on the upwind side of the airport. If you have to come in for a re-light, we have to be very, very careful about it, because you'll be crossing the final for Runway 8 to land on the Taxiway Alpha.

SkySight. While that spools up, as regards Bill's remark about changing gears, around here, gear changing is very important. If you don't do it correctly, you will find yourself with a box full of neutrals. 

Okay, so, here we are with the thermal height. It looks pretty good right there. But, when you plug in storms and over-development... taking a minute to refresh.

Okay, here's the problem. You can see that the storms are all embedded to the northwest, to the north. As the day progresses, let's see what it looks like. It will get kind of ugly.

Five o'clock? Three o'clock. Three o'clock. Yeah, then, things are looking kind of grim. But, what this does say that if there's any place we can fly today for a task area, it's going to be to the south.

Winds aloft up at 18,000 feet are up pretty good. They're calling it 35 knots out of the southeast, out of about 230 degrees. Below that, it's not quite as intense. It's down below 20 knots but, again, out of the southwest. I said southeast, I meant to say southwest.

Task, Contest Day 2

Itinerary task, Task A is two hours. Basically, what we're looking at is if those storms really stay to the north, if they really don't develop, if we end up with being better than forecast, we want to have a possibility of getting a reasonable day in. But, at the same time we have Task C, which is a one hour task, which will give us just the bare minimum just to get a day in and we'll decide that on the grid.

Right now we're in Task Alpha, but be ready to adjust the minimum time down.

For the low performance folks, you have a maximum start height of 13,000 feet, minimum finish of 8000 feet. What's very important is that as SSA rules dictate your minimum distance is 40 miles. You'll have to go further than the edges of the turn points today to get it finished. We'll get to that in one second.

1-26 Championships, same deal. Itinerary task, same task. Only difference is no maximum start, no minimum finish, and your minimum distance is 30 miles.

If you hit the sackers, you'll get a finish.

Here's a task. We're going to use 008 North start. This is Moriarty airport and we're going to keep you in landable terrain, and give you some room to go a bit further if the conditions do develop or that storm stays to the north.

We're going to be watching it very closely whether it will be able to launch today, whether it will be able to get a task open. And, if a task does open, there is a decent possibility of the weather changing, so be sure to have your trailers all primed and ready to go today. And that's all I have for today. If you have any questions feel free to see me.