Day 5 Recap

Club Class Day 5

Today I got to experience first hand the weather conditions that these pilots had to fly in, and itwas certainly tricky. It stayed relatively cool until around 1300, which led to a rather pleasant grid squat but also meant that the thermals were weak and underdeveloped. An appropriately ambitious Task A called for a 350k racing task triangle  but as the day took longer and longer to develop there was less of a

chance for this racing task. Somewhere during the launch they switched to Task B which was a shorter 311k racing polygon. All day the thermals were choppy, undeveloped,weak, and relatively low for thegiven terrain and landing options; in short the weather was less than what I would have considered adequate for such a task into the mountains. Many contestants felt the same way as about 1/3 of the

fleet either neglected to start the task, made their way to the first point then returned home or made the first turn then decided to not continue on task and returned home. Out of the 24 pilots only 4 managed their way around the course. I myself had the opportunity to fly around in an Arcus and even in that I do not think that I would have wanted to give this task a go not to mention anything in the club class fleet. Overall today was a low point day but still gave a good mix up on the score sheet with 5 more

days of flying left there is plenty of time for contestants to climb, or fall, on the standings.

 

David McMaster