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After getting to bed last night after midnight, my crew Mark Hawkins and I ‘slept in’ until 7:30 this morning. I for one really needed the sleep, as the schedule here at Logan is extremely hectic. The combination of a 12:30pm grid, followed by a typically late launch around 2pm, followed by a harrowing rock-scraping initial climb, followed by a 3-4 hour task, results in landing back at Logan around 7 – 7:30pm. By the time the glider is in the box, scores turned in, pilot fed and watered – its usually pushing 11pm. Repeat until pilot succumbs to fatigue ;-).
Anyway, because of our late wake-up, I was again seriously behind schedule getting the daily report out, and I had Mark go ahead to the field and call me no later than 9am to remind me I had to get there right away. I did the best I could, arriving there around 9:30am, only to find that Mark had completely assembled my glider, complete with probes and tape – now that’s a good crew! With that done, we were able to ballast up and get the glider to the grid before the morning meeting, getting us right back on schedule.
Weather today was the best we’ve seen so far at Logan. Cumulus clouds were present and we could see cloud streets forming up both to the west and east as we launched. I dumped half my water load on tow (this is becoming SOP here), but managed to hang on to the other half and still climb out on the Logan ridges. The task for 15m today was pretty ambitious – northeast to Alpine with a 30-mile circle, then south to Geneva with a 24-mile radius, 3.5 hours. The trick to these eastern tasks is to get from the main ridge to an intermediate ridge at the Meade Peak turnpoint, and find a climb there to allow you to glide downwind to the Salt River mountain range, hopefully arriving there high enough to climb up to ridge top and fly the ridge north and south. Of course at the end of the day you have to reverse this procedure, made more interesting by waning lift and by the fact that you are now doing the two transitions into a 15-20kt headwind – oh joy! Fortunately today we had clouds and cloud streets with bases in the 13-14,000 range (not all that high for Logan), and if you could find a street heading your way at the end of the day it made things a LOT easier. John Cochrane (BB) won the day today with 74.46 mph, cementing his first overall place with a 80 point lead over 2nd place Gary Itner (P7).
The regional Sports Class guys had a task along the main ridge, so they were able to play there all day without the east and then west transitions. Even so, it must have been a bit difficult, as there were at least 3 landouts (I think they were all ‘land-backs’ at Logan) including Karl Striedieck (K6 in this contest). The day winner (for the 2nd time) was Michael Reid (BK) in his Std Libelle with 63.32mph raw, 64.7mph handicapped. Tim McAllister (EY) was 4th for the day but remains in 1st place overall by a comfortable margin.
The regional FAI guys had a much more ambitious task to the west, and they had some difficulty with the first transition from Mink Creek to the western ranges, and the speeds and landouts showed it. There were cloud streets out there, but they apparently were being pretty stingy with their thermals. Walt Rogers (WX) won the day with 58.79mph raw, 53.79mph handicapped, and he is now in 2nd place overall. Biff Huss was 8th for the day but remains in 1st overall by almost 300 points.
Tomorrow is the last day for the regional, and that will reduce the fleet to just 19 entrants after all the withdrawals. Maybe with fewer pilots and just one class, things will be a little less hectic – we’ll see.
TA
