Region 8 day 1

First day at Ephrata for racing.  We're a little under subscribed due to other contests close to our dates and of course the big C-19. But we're off to a good start!

Sixteen contestants are devided into 3 classes, all handicapped: Sports, Open/18M, and Standard/15M. You can check out the score sheets to see who came to participate.

The first day the weather was not expected to be great and it was WORSE! we had 4 gliders land-out and one Self-Launch do a restart.

Strong winds came up late in the day and really blew the thermals apart.  In addition there was a dense overcast over most of the area by 4PM and that was the cause of the devauled day in some classes. Everyone was safe and the gliders intact.

Just a shout-out to the staff at the contest:

Noel Wade is the Contest Manager,

Mike Newgard is the Contest Director,

Brian Case is the Scorer (a tough job when you're also flying the contest).

We also have a revolving door of ground support personel, Lots of thanks to them too!

There are three tow planes but it seems that one of them has a fuel leak that we hope to have fixed by Wednesday.  In the meantime, there are 5 self-launchers that reduce the need for quite as many tow planes.

Check the score sheets for the task: given how the day fell apart, it was a real challenge for most of the contestants.

PS. Sorry for the late posting of the report, I needed to work out the access to the contest page.  I'll do better the rest of the week.