Day 1

Today dawned with a mid afternoon window of good soaring conditions and storms forecast late in the day and evening.

At this mornings meeting we flew the Dutch Flag and played the National Anthem of the Netherlands to welcome Marco Raaijmakers who is flying his Ka-8 in the Low Performance Class.

Everyone appreciated that the winds were around 15 mph and the temps were only in the 90's. I saw one competitor wearing a jacket this morning. The grid was full with only one pilot not flying due to work commitments.

The task was a 2:30 MAT to Halstead first about 20 miles to the east and then a four close in turnpoints to make 86 miles total. 

Paul Sodamann and his crew worked the launch and the 1-26er's were on task at 1:20 PM. Low Performance opened at 1:39. 

Winds aloft made the run to Halstead pretty easy for most. JimBob said he was doing about 80 mph on the way. Turning back was tough and not too long after the re-lights were finished, Amy's phone started ringing at the retrieve desk.

Several landed at or in the vicinity of Halstead. 2 Landed at the Fisher private airport. Several more in the vicinity of Haven and Yoder. JimBob and Ron Schwartz made it back to the Sunflower runway.

In the low performance Class, the only landout was Bob Craig in the Russia. The rest all finished about the same time. 

Storms were building along a boundary just to the north of Highway 50 during the task. Halstead is right on Highway 50. A few crews got soaked from isolated rain showers during retrieves. Generally the movement was to the northeast, away from the task.

Back at Sunflower it was all hands on deck to make as much hangar space available as possible. Severe storms were forecast for the night and we wanted to get as many of the 1-26's. In part thanks to so many being on trailers, I'm happy to report that everyone is inside for the night. 

Cathy Williams had instrument problems on her first flight and spent a couple hours working the panel of her glider. She took her second tow about 4:30 PM and went out on course to get some points! I admire that 1-26 grit!

We get a frontal passage with these storms. The rest of the contest has fairly light winds and relatively cool temps forecast. Highs hardly above 90 and overnight lows in the mid 60's. I think everyone is excited about that. I'm happy that our visitors get to see a little bit of everything that Kansas has to offer.

Tony