Contest Day 4 - Friday April 23

Update - Midmorning: We have a difficult progressively downhill wx. situation today.  Thermal activity should start a little later and fairly quickly reach 5000 ft. tops, probably without cu's.  There is a rather large cloud laden low pressure system just to our west.  The leading edge of those clouds is less than 100 miles away and approaching rather quickly.  None of the models seem to know when or if this cloud cover will shut down thermal activity, but best guess is 4 pm or a little later.  posted by Leigh

Update - Summary

The overnight temperatures were cold, just like last night.  The high pressure continued to move into that area and with it dry air, although there was the expectation of high clouds later in the day.  With the certainty of rain tomorrow this will be the last contest day so with the shorter soaring day, and it also being the last day, the tasks were kept relatively short.   The forecast was for a high of 72 with winds light and variable changing to S/SW later in the day.  There was no expectation of cu with thermal tops at 4k – 5k feet. 

The fleet was on the grid at noon and the first launch was 12:30. At the noon grid meeting new task sheets were distributed with tasks X, Y and the proverbial Dump task.   This was of course in addition to the original task A, B and Dump.  Before the tasks opened the CD decide to call task X which was the same for all the classes except for the start location.  The task was a 2:00 hour TAT with turnpoints West Aiken (10 mi), Williston (5 mi) and Allendale (25 mi) for a minimum distance of about 115 miles. 

Speeds were typically slower than we had been seeing this week although still quite respectable.   The fastest speed of the day was 70.31 mph by Ken Sorenson (18-meter) along with 62.27 mph Team Murphy/May in Sports, 67.12 mph Dick Butler I Open and 66.41 mph for Jared Granzow in FAI class.   The final tally for the contest was Sports Class, 3668 points, Team Murphy/May, Duo Discus; Open Class, 3732 points, Dick Butler, ASW-22BE; 18-Meter, 3957 points, Ken Sorenson, Ventus 3FES-18; FAI, 3557 points, Evan Ludeman, ASW-27. 

Tonight we have pulled pork, ribs, beans, slaw…….um-um.

Another big thanks to the Al and Rhonda Tyler and all the volunteers for a great contest. 

Jim Cole