Practice Day One
Good evening race fans,
Today was the 1st practice day at the 2022 Club Class Nationals in Moriarty, New Mexico. For those not familiar, Moriarty straddles the (metaphorical) divide between the southern Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, leading to what I’m told is an interesting mix of mountain and flatland soaring. If all goes to plan, I’ll get my first taste of it tomorrow.
CD Bif Huss, and his task team – Mitch Hudson and Mike Westbrook– cooked up a 2.5 hour Assigned Area Task for the practice day that took a handful of flyers north towards Santa Fe, southeast towards Vaughn, and then back home after a steering turn. Murmurs on the airfield indicated that conditions were good, but perhaps a bit bluer and trickier than expected. “Good,” however, requires some context: pilots reported climbs over 10 kts and cloudbases over 15k ft! One pilot even reported the strongest thermal of his soaring career. If that’s good, I can’t wait to see what the locals consider great! For today’s task, it looks like the proprietor of the P7 Brewery, Gary Ittner, won the day, followed by Keith Eyler and Steve Vihlen.
More to come in the next few days. See you at the airport,
Michael Marshall