A Fine Day of Soaring

Going to a contest always involves lots of preparation.  You ship needs to be tuned up, books are read to improve your mental attitude/soaring skill for the contest and you pack everything for the contest you could possibly need. Of course you miss things so you must make the obligatory two trips to Walmart, Ace Hardware or to see if Rex might have an instrument or two you could borrow for the contest.  When you are in the back seat of a contest glider your checklist is somewhat lacking.  So on  Team 98 Pete has started a new game called what did Rich forget this time.  I’m getting better but the past two days have been rough on his jacket collection.

At 8:30 every morning, the task advisors consisting of Martin Grant, Pete Alexander, David Greenhill and Kathy Fosha, confer with Rex Mayes (CD) to come up with a fair test for the Standard and 20 Meter National pilots.  The weather is a little unusual for this time of year and even the locals are having a tough time getting around the course efficiently.  Today we had a 3-hour TAT that started at Craggy, and went to Wright, Carter, Medicine Lake, Duzel and home.  A sniffer was launched and he immediately connected with lift.  The rest of the fleet was launched and it was very apparent that climbing up to starting altitude was going to be tough.  Several pilots had to use ridge soaring skills to climb up Craggy to get in better lift.  Once you were over 7,000ft, it was much easier to climb. 

The run to Wright was really pretty good.  A convergence line set up to get into the turn area relatively easily.  This line was better for the very early and very late starters.  Once you got into the turn area though, where to go next was a big question.  There were a couple of different lines to get from Wright to Carter thru the Scott valley, and how you managed your altitude and speed determined how stressful your next leg would be.  Going to Medicine Lake over the valley was a calming experience.  Can you read in, there was almost no lift.  Gliders were getting on the east side of the valley at relatively low altitudes. Many pilots pulled out all the stops to keep from landing out on the slopes of Mount Shasta  There were a set of cu that were well developed and begging a pilot to make the trek to a very forested area.  Unfortunatly, TX with Mike Westbrook and Jacob Fairbairn aboard, landed out safely in their Duo Discus.  If crossing the valley once was hard, we had to do it again to get to Duzel.  This time the valley worked a little better evidenced by a 9 knot climb right by Lake Shastina.  Once you were in the Duzel turn area the lift turned really good.  The final glide was fun due to the amount of lift on the return leg.  All told, it was a very nice day.

In the 20 Meter Class, Bif Huss finished in third place just 2 points behind Pete Alexander in the Team 98 glider.  John Cochrane and Rick Indrebo, in the Williams Soaring ASG-32 MI, covered 312km at a speed of 103.25kph.  It was a great race that threw a lot of challenges to the pilots.  John and Rick flew a great flight after having difficulty climbing in the beginning.  One point you can take away from their flight is to never give up.  Great job guys!

Tomorrow is going to be another challenging day due to the weather.  However, the contest staff led by Noelle Mayes, is ready.  So until tomorrow race fans, goodnight from the 20 Meter Nationals.

Cheers,

Rich Owen
Team 98 back seater