Dark and Stormy
If you wonder what glider pilots do before a pilots meeting, it varies from pilot to pilot. Some come out real early to take advantage of the cooler temperatures at Hobbs and Uvalde. IHOP and Denney’s are popular eating establishments for breakfast. You can almost always find pilots and crews at the Starbucks by the Walmart. Everyone has their favorites. However, the time before the pilot’s meeting does bring on some different events. We always enjoy renewing friendships in the first couple of days. We talk about the flying a lot during all gatherings. But that can hold the attention of our pilots only so long. Today, we played with a “Gravity Well”. Didn’t know this was a thing until P7 showed up in the parking lot with a bag of marbles. I asked Gary what that is for and he said we were going to play with the gravity well. Well, outside the auditorium we use for our meetings is a device in the hallway that looks like a roulette wheel that goes down to a drain like hole. You roll the marbles around the top edge and they go round and round until they travel on lower circles until they finally go down the hole.
You retrieve the marbles from a ledge on the bottom of the contraption. Within minutes of starting the action we had 10 pilots and crews spinning marbles down the drain. Then we were losing our marbles (pun intended) since some of the return chutes were blocked. Upon further investigation, we found there was money that was stuck in the return chute. Seems like the youngsters at college never even had any marbles when they went to school. Guess that is what’s wrong with today’s generation
One thing that isn’t wrong with a slightly younger generation than mine, girls still like to dress up the same. Today when Pete and I were getting 98 ready, Melissa Indrebo and Jeanette Baugh showed up in identical shirts and black running shorts. They looked so cute and neither of them knew what the other was wearing. Everyone got a chuckle out of the pair at the pilots meeting. By the way, even though both of their husbands are flying, they are working on the launch crew helping out and keeping the kids safe. Thanks ladies!!
Richard Kellereman always does a great weather brief. His dry British humor is pretty evident when he gives the predictions for the day and his recommendation for the CD on where to go. He always seems to end every briefing with “it will be interesting to see what the task is”.
During the meeting Marshall gave Dick Butler a golf course divot repair sand jar. Apparently the Hobbs Parks and Recreation Department saw the Corcordia land on the runway for a relight and they were afraid the runway might be damaged. Corcordia had a full load of water and the landing rollout was quite long.
We have had a number of mistakes made by pilots while loading the task into their navigation computers. Wrong turnpoint radii, start turnpoint changes for the current day not caught, forgetting to go to the tag up altitude and wrong radii for the start circle. All these mistakes can make a great contest something you want to forget. Your process on mitigating these errors is pretty simple. Looking at the distances on the task will catch most of the turnpoint errors. The LX systems will give you the max, nominal, and minimum distances for the task. They will be off by the diameter of the finish circle but should be very close. Any distance off by a couple of miles could by a wrong turnpoint radii or wrong turnpoint number.
Marshall sent both classes on the same TAT. We started at Start A, Portales, Muleshoe, Kenna and Finish. The turn radii were 20, 20 and 30km. Everyone had a pretty good climb off tow and we waited to get higher before the start. In the beginning, we were only getting to 10,000ft and no one wanted to start on the task that low. Soon groups were leaving and the race was on. The first leg was full of wispies but with better looking clouds as we passed Tatum. Off to the west we could see the front coming in bring cirrus and middle level clouds. There wasn’t much sunlight evident in that area and it was moving towards our last turnpoint. Turns were made based on the clouds we saw and the time you arrived in the turn area. Most pilots went about three quarters of the way to the back of the turn area. That lined up a nice row of clouds leading to the second turnpoint. This run was really fast and high. Lift at this time was averaging around 6-8kt knots and the cloud bases were at 14,000ft. But if you were in the upper height band, you didn’t have too thermal very much at all. The key to a good score was where you made the turn in the last area. Everyone saw the weather coming and some turned slightly earlier than desired. The third turn area did not look as good as the earlier portion of the leg. There was a large, dark, completely overcast area that did not look inviting at all. Some of the pilots who took a gamble and entered this area either did great or got caught for a long time in the bad air. Even if you made the turn successfully, there was a big deviation to return to the sun and better air. The run back home for some was amazing, for others was a challenge. We had 2 landouts at airports and I was surprised we didn’t have more. However, we did have 8 pilots return under minimum time which did affect the scores a lot.
In 15-meter class, we had a tie for first with Erik Nelson and Danny Sorenson. In my mind Danny won since he is flying a Discus 2aW verses Erik who is flying the latest generation Ventus 3. They flew 544km at 150kph. In third was Rick Indrebro who is still in first overall by 10 points. The top five are only separated by 150 points.
In Open class, the Concordia and Dick Butler smoked the field, completing 564km at 161kph. He did this without having to relight! Second place was claimed by Dan Mockler with John Lubon in third flying an ASG-29-18. Nice flying guys!!
It was a great time at dinner with the Team 98, P7 and crew, TT and 9B. Kerry Huffstutler also joined the group to lend some Texas charm and class to the dinner table. This the 5th time Pete and I have had Mexican at Hobbs. We are on a roll!
Well, it is a little later than usual and I will end on this note. Nothing gives me more joy than to fly these magnificent ships, with the best pilots in the US, who are also close friends. Hope you are as lucky as I am. Good night everyone.
Rich Owen
Team 98 Backseater