First official practice day at Mifflin 15m Nats & Sports Regional

Sorry about the long title, but the first week of the contest here will feature both the 15m Nationals and a Sports Class regional.

As it seems it often happens in contests, the best soaring days occur just before, or just after the contest.  Certainly the last two days here seem to bear that out.   Yesterday was the first post-frontal day, and although it was a spectacular ridge day (rumor has it that Brian Milner GJ flew over 2000km), there were a number of rainshowers that complicated some flights and truncated others.  Today was just a good a ridge day, but with no rain,  much higher cloudbases, and unlimited visibility.  The practice task was south to Cumberland with a 30 mile circle, north to Nisbett with a 20 mile circle,  south again to Blair County with  a 20 mile circle, then home.  The way the circles were set up meant there weren’t any significant upwind transitions required, resulting in some pretty high speeds.  I haven’t seen all the daily scores yet, but mine was something 500+km at 99mph!

In the interesting story department, I had been looking at the  Mifflin weather, and so decided to be clever and leave my house Wednesday evening and stop overnight about 125 miles short of Mifflin so I could get to Mifflin early Thursday morning ready to fly.   Well that part worked, but then Thursday night I discovered I had left my overnight bag at the Motel – ouch!  So this morning I had to get up at 0-dark-30 and make a nice 250-mile round trip before breakfast.  This meant I missed the morning pilots meeting, forgot to register, and generally screwed up by the numbers – ouch!  Good thing my head is firmly attached at the shoulders, or I’m sure I’d forget that too ;-)

Tomorrow’s popular weather is for sunny, high of 76, and light winds from the west.  Guess we’ve had our ridge day – oh well.

Frank (TA)