Caesar Creek XC Camp Day 4

99 Soaring Fans, Bravo Zulu here.

Today was another flying day here at Caesar Creek.  Although not as strong as the first 2 fly days, it was workable and most participants stayed on the task and made it home.  There were a few relights and getting away from CCSC was a challenge.  Sparing you all a blow-by-blow description of the flight, let me just say that this experience has been well worth my time and money.  Even though I have some contest experience, this camp has done exactly what I wanted it to do for me.  I wanted to formalize some of my impressions and informal learnings that I gathered from my first two contests.

Since there was a wide range of experience among the participants and a similar spread among the glider’s performance the participants were grouped to keep those with nearly the same capabilities together.  My impressions from the debriefs and discussions with other participants are that everyone benefited from the camp.  I would commend it to anyone who is thinking for stretching out their wings a bit more.  Hopefully, Caesar Creek Soaring Club will do it again next year.

Today, I left Bravo Zulu tethered and flew with John Lubon in the club’s ASK 21.  Trust me when I tell you that for me to give up a chance to fly takes a lot of internal discussion with my other self.  It was well worth the trade.  I learned a couple of things that I believe I could not have learned any other way.  It is one thing to be told something; better to watch it done, but best is to go do it myself.  I know what he did and why he did it.  Now I just need to practice it.

 

By the way, Bravo Zulu, aka Bug Zapper has a new nav suite.  My PDA died on me Tuesday during the flight.  That created no real problem but it gave me the impetus to make my decision to replace it.  I had seen Clear Nav at the Seniors and Perry and know several people who fly with it.  I liked the design and decided to get one for BZ.  I called John Murray at Eastern Sailplane at 0930 Wednesday and he had it installed and running perfectly in time for me to get my glider to the grid by 1230.  Fantastic job.  Thanks John.  Now I will have several days to fly with it before the Region 6 South contest starting Monday.  I am loving it.

Bravo Zulu, “Out”