WE Report, Day 5 PWGC, Uvalde

We have had the day off today as a rest day.  I arrived 3 days early:  drove two days, flew two days, repaired a flat tire on the main gear on the next day, and then competed five days — I guess I was ready for a rest day.

Today’s chores included laundry, lots of email and website work, and removing the tailwheel to have it filled with foam (to prevent blowouts from the visious thorns that are present) and re-installing the tail wheel.  This added 2.5 lbs to the tail wheel so a new weight and balance is in order as well!  Later, I plan to go to the movies.

The weather for yesterday turned out to be tricky.  We started with low cloudbases of around 4,000 feet above the ground and these went down to 3,500 on the first leg.  The day was forecast to improve as the morning cloud deck burned off but heating seemed to be slower than expected.

We were told to change to Task B in the air and fiddling with two flight computers while struggling to stay up above 2,000 feet was an interesting chore.  Hot and sweaty, I managed to safely and accurately get the computers reconfigured.  Now, I needed to find P7 and get ready for our planned 2:30 start.

Task B was another turn area task with a nominal distance of 534 km, 4 hrs minimum time and the following turn points and circle radii:

ID Control Point Name Distance (Km) Radius
73 GPS Start N 0 5
21 Devine 73.99 20
58 Piloncillo 191.47 40
29 Fossil Creek Ranch 342.86 5
62 Rocksprings 388.5 10
68 West Kerr 434.82 30
Uvalde 534.03 3

 

Route for Day 5

I quickly found 8H, DL, and P7 … and XG was with us too.  Two days ago, the max start height was 4,500 and cloudbase at the start was 6,000.  For Day 5, they raised the max start height to 5,000 feet and we were in the clouds with lots of haze at that height.  I know the CD is trying to help us be safe, but frankly, I think watching the altimeter and the watch to ensure we were below max height for 2 minutes is more dangerous than watching our for gliders close to cloudbase.

Our group of five started at 2:30 as planned.  The first leg was very soft but clouds were closely spaced so we were able to bump along and wait for good lift which we found.  We just touched the turn area so we could head south towards Piloncillo where the clouds looked higher and better — and they were!  As you can see in the barogram below, each climb took us 500 feet higher until we were at 7,000 feet and getting 6-7 knot lift with some streeting.

Day 5 Barogram

We went relatively deep into this turn area because of the good condition and turned when we had a nice street lined up heading north-northwest and downwind.  Our speed at the turn was only 65 mph but it was about to start improving.

The run north was very good.  P7, DL and I were still together.  8H dropped behind us shortly after the start as he was a little lower than us and XG took his own line.  There were good streets and fast runs will 6-7 knot climbs running north.  We could see thunderstorms starting to build way to the west and the day appeared to be softening towards the north.

We crossed over the Fossil Creek Ranch turn area and continued on to Rock Springs which is in the hill country.  We got high and made the transition to into the hills and arrived about 3,500′ AGL with several gliders already there and marking lift.  DL was now about 5 miles behind P7 and me.  We climbed up and began checking the timing on our computers.  It looked we could just touch the Rock Springs turn area and only needed to penetrate a short distance into the West Kerr turn area.

In the West Kerr turn area it looked fair towards home and not so fair in other directions.  We were at about 3,500′ AGL again and wanting to make the turn towards home.  I checked the computer again.  Just a few more miles ahead and I would have 4 minutes over on a MacCready 4.0 setting to get home.  P7 made the turn and I went just a bit further and turned too.  Once you make the last turn, you are committed and hope you have the timing right.

P7 was marking a 5 knot thermal about 4 miles ahead–crap!  I’m already using up my 4 minutes of margin.  Then, we connect to a street and we are about 90 km out from the finish and 3,400 feet below final glide–crap!  we’re going to be early and there is nothing we can do about it now.

We continue down the street and continue to eat up time.  I go the full 90 km without turning, making up the 3,400 feet below glide and ended up 8 minutes under time, ouch!  Cost me 4 km/h and about 50 points.  Fortunately, Bruce Tailor was 3 minutes early and Jerzy (XG) was 12 minutes early.  We got bitten by the great Uvalde cloudstreets.

It was long after we landed that the thunderstorms to the west had grown to 60,000 feet and were now blocking the sun.  The day ended fast.  I finished second for the day and moved into third place overall.  Three days to go.

WE's Day 5 Stats