Day 5 Update

Hello again Race Fans,
Well, after 2 days in the box for poor weather, today dawned with a chance that we fly. At the morning meeting the weatherman told us that the day is not actually as bad as it looks. Imagine that, an optimistic weather man. Charlie Spratt would have loved this, he used to always tell me that weather men were tasked with giving you the worst possible scenario so as to cover their back sides when it all went wrong. Well on this day, optimism prevailed.
Grid time was delayed to 1:00 PM to allow a few scattered showers to pass over and for the wind direction to change from southwest to northwest. In actuality, this happened at about 12:15 and by grid time it was a matter of getting the boys up there and off they went. The task was a 3 turn TAT of Mc Connelsburg, Mifflintown, Orbisonia and home all with 15 mile circles to allow for the conditions to change.  One of the task advisors told me while walking to the grid that he thought this would be the day that the score sheet scrambled. Turns out he was right. The leader had an unfortunate encounter with a cornfield and came home in the box as well as a few others.
The hotshot of the day was young Noah Reiter, flying a Duck Hawk. My brother Steve, who talks fluent Donald Duck, could be heard quacking when he landed. 2nd was our fearless local ridge runner extraordinaire, Karl Striedieck. The problem that bit the guys that landed out was for a short period of time in the afternoon, the ridge quit. Those who realized it soon enough, saved their backsides by getting high, those who didn’t suffered the consequences and tumbled the score sheet like a boulder rolling downhill.
Tomorrow appears to be a more straight thermal day as the wind will quit and the temperatures will rise and should spurn good lift. It also looks like we should fly the last 4 days in a row. Stay tuned and find out.

Brian Glick, CTP