Day 3

This morning we flew the Flag and played the anthem of France to acknowledge Pierre Grellet-Aumont who is flying 686. It was also recognized the last few weeks that our towpilot Mikael from Oklahoma Soaring was born in Finland, Amir from Kansas Soaring was born in Iran, and Erica McGovern was born in Hungary. This is truly an international contest!

The Hutchinson News ran a nice article about the contest in the Sunday paper. While we are all disappointed that JimBob did not make the front page, us locals are happy that gliding has been featured in two Sunday papers in a row. Last week's had a great article about the recent CAP Training Camp that was held at Sunflower.

Tasks today were 3 hour area tasks with a first turnpoint at Pratt. 1-26'ers got a second turnpoint at Plevna on the way home while the Low Performance ended up with a 2 hour task to Pratt and back.

We were down a towplane so the launch took a while. Conditions were tough at best althoug a handful of 1-26'ers down the grid managed to time the cycles well. At one point, Dan Nezgoda in 225 radioed that he might be landing out but 10 minutes later chimed in again to say he was OK. There were many relights and we ended up with 5 or 6 1-26 pilots who went out on task. Dan managed to finish! The others landed out although with enough distance that we should have a valid day.

4 Low Performance Pilots attempted the task and all made the turnpoint and landed out on the way back. I went along to retrieve Marco who landed in a beautiful cut wheat field in the vicinity of Arlington, KS, as did so many others. We had a great dinner in Hutchinson with Ron Schwartz & Bob Hurni who are both past Champions and are flying team in 680. 

It was a tough day of flying and I can't say enough about every member of the launch crew, the pilots who earned every point they got today, and the crews who made it happen. It looks like we now have 3 valid days in Low Performance cand 2 valid days in 1-26. 

Tony