I must be getting old (54) as I can’t remember my flights like I used to. Rhonda Tyler (8H better half) often remarks, “It amazes me how you guys remember every thermal, cruise, bird, cloud, etc. — but, for some reason, you can’t remember to bring home some milk!”
Yesterday was a fabulous Uvalde soaring day. Not quite “classic” as we did have to stop and thermal but climbs good be as good as 9 knots. The 18-m task had us zigging and zagging across the wind lines with only one good leg along the cloud streets. We had a Turn Area Task close to 500Km and a 3 hr 40 minute minimum time. At 146 kph (90 mph), P7 and I chewed up 537 Km with an average climb rate of 6.5 knots.
Day 2 Task (click to enlarge)
P7, 8H and I started 2:31 as planned at the start gate limit set at 7,000′. (Yes, I know I am mixing metric and imperial units but all of the gliders have altimeters that measure in feet; so, we are working altitude in feet.)
Our first leg was to the east and we made very good time mostly bumping clouds and cruising. We turned Casterville and headed for the Turn Area (TA). The run was good and we already could tell that we would need to go deep into several of the turns. Near the back of the TA, we made our turn and started the 65km leg to Uno Mas Ranch. We had three nice thermals on this leg with one averaging over 7 knots — my vario showed 8-9 knots 30 second averages must of the way up!
Altitude vs Time
We turned Uno Mass as we started another nice climb and headed north towards Hondo. We now had the wind out our back and some amount of streeting. We covered 156 km at 99mph. Our best climb for this leg was 7.8 knots. Turning Hondo we had one leg left before the turn home as we looked for the thermal to get us on final glide. We spotted a dust devil that climbed up from the ground 5,000 feet and we pushed our gliders over and made a bee-line for it. It wasn’t as expected but we got a nice 5-6 knot climb which put us on final glide. We covered another 81 km on this leg at 89 mph then made our run for home.
The final leg was fun with P7 and I still together and running fast. We continued to gather speed as we flew for home covering the last 38 km at 148 mph. We finished together and managed a 3rd and 4th place finish for the day. Below are my stats for the day.
Day 2 Stats for WE (click to enlarge)
