2019 1-26 Championship, Day 4, Report
2019 1-26 Championship, Day 4, Report
Contest Director Report
https://www.facebook.com/SoaringSocietyofAmerica/videos/445353289363014/
Daniel Sazhin:
... whether the storms to the south developed faster than expected and that made it not possible to get a safe launch going, but today it looks like a very, very interesting day. You guys might laugh but I'd say it's about 50/50. There's 50% chance of it just being completely washed out, no chance of getting up in the air, nothing like that. There's a 50% chance of it being absolutely gang busters, best day that you've ever flown, possibly day in Moriarty ever. I mean it.
Bill's going to show you later but it all depends upon ... There's going to be ... We're at the intersection of two systems today. When that happens we get a dry line. Basically, for people who don't know what that is, that convergence, it's basically like a ridge at 16,000 feet. There's a really good possibility of that developing today. If it does then we will have an outstanding contest day.
Let's get started. Contest announcements, again a reminder, send in your log today if you fly. Just like we talked about yesterday, grid time is going to be a little bit later. We're going to let the time ... We're going to let it cook a little bit, dry out a bit. Our grid time's going to be 12:30. It's going to be a bit windier than other days. We're not going to have a pilots meeting in the front of the grid. At 12:30 be out there, and be ready to get in your glider, and fly. Do not leave your glider.
There's a good chance that we'll be launching in 15 minutes thereafter. We looked at the weather. We think that it's going to trigger by then. Get out to the grid and then be ready to go.
Weather Report
https://www.facebook.com/SoaringSocietyofAmerica/videos/332849130741671/
Bill Hill:
At two o'clock, because assuming we stage at twelve-thirty and get off by one-thirty or so, we could be rocking and rolling by two o'clock.
So you can see that cloud base is fifteen-five right over here. Same thing for Moriarty. Here's the really neat thing that could make this one incredibly rock and roll kind of a day, and that's the air mass conversions. At two o'clock, and there it is. It's this bad boy right here.
Now, if I slew out a little bit, you can see that that thing goes quite a ways south, goes down to Rudoso and up north. The task you have today is gonna allow you to take advantage of that. A sheer line here in New Mexico is not an uncommon feature. What we'll have is on the dry side, which will be on the west side of this thing. The cloud bases can be as much as 4,000 feet higher than on the west side. That's a lot, but more often than not it's closer to 2,000 feet difference between the two.
What you'll see that will identify them over and above the fact that you've got one cloud base fairly high, and one cloud that's fairly low, they'll be connecting tendrils of cloud that will show you where you need to be flying to take advantage of this. There have been days when we've flown from Albuquerque...from Moriarty to Colorado and back without circling the conversions. So, it's possible today if this thing all falls together like it should, you can see some of the fastest 1-26 speeds that have ever been flown in a 1-26.
Now as we move this up a little bit to the time frame up a little bit, later in the day, you can see here what the difference in the winds are along this thing, and this is it right there. It's gonna shift around a little bit. First it moves a little bit east, and then by a little after four it's come back to the west just a bit, but it's basically gonna be essentially in the same spot. So, with any luck at all, you'd be able to evaluate yourself of this and have a really roaring good time. A real New Mexico day, and then of course over here west of Albuquerque...you wanna go by over there?
Task
https://www.facebook.com/SoaringSocietyofAmerica/videos/2409618349069875/
Daniel Sazhin:
I've looked and, if an convergence does pick up the way it's predicted right now, we actually might run out of the maximum distance. So, we are currently at Task Bravo for both classes, three hours. Task Bravo. Low performance, 15,000 foot maximum start, 8000 foot finish. Same Task for the 126 champs, but there is no maximum start. There's no maximum start height and that kind of minimum. The minimum distance today is 50 miles for both classes. Here is the Task. Start point south, big sector over Lanny Junction, big sector over 040 Pedernal and then back home and the maximum distance is somewhere about 233 miles and we may see folks go quite... We might see folks actually end up going 12 of 180 miles today, if the conditions do line up.
We set big sectors because we don't know exactly where the lines going to set up. This will give you the ability to go further east or further west. If it does set up it's going to be absolutely gangbusters but this is not a beginner day. There's a couple of folks that probably shouldn't be flying by there, by virtue of the wind, by virtue of the technical nature of conditions. But the folks that do fly today, if the conditions do line up you're going to have a really, really wonderful day.
If you have any questions, please feel free to see me after the briefing. Thank you.
Chuck Lohre, Contest Reporter
513-260-9025
You can find all of the contest videos on the SSA Facebook page. Please, you 1-26ers, share to the 1-26 Facebook page and the 1-26 Association page. I’m sorry but there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to re-post them to other sites. I already have to repost them to the Low Performance SSA report pages.
And you can find the day’s task and other information on the Google Drive page Daniel has set up tinyurl.com/126Champs
Thanks for all your patience. I’m doing the best that I can.