I’m writing this from my house late Saturday night, after getting back late from the gliderport for cat-sitting duties (the wife is out of town grand-kid sitting, so I have to feed/water/clean up after the cats).  We had a reasonably successful practice day at CCSC today, but we had at least one landout due to some late afternoon thunder-bumpers moving through the area.   The forecast for the day was winds out of the south 10-15mph, cloud bases in the 5000′ msl range,  moderate lift values, and a chance of overdevelopment/spreadout due to a temperature/dewpoint pinch at around 5000′ msl.  The task for the day was a 2.5 hour TAT, north to 22 Madison County, then south to 10 Double-J, but only a few pilots attempted it.  I know Erik Nelson (5E), John Mittell (BZ) and Joe Jackson (FT) attempted the task (I watched 5E and BZ on the SPOT map), and 5E and BZ completed it.  John Mittell said he had to deviate well to the east on the second leg to avoid the blowoff from a storm to the southwest but was able to make it around OK.  Unfortunately Joe Jackson wasn’t quick enough to recognize the danger signs and got shot down.  He wound up in a soybean field (another one that was at least a mile on a side), where he got the full celebrity treatment from the local fire department, sheriff’s department, and state troopers (someone obviously called in an “airplane crash”).  I went out to retrieve him, and discovered that Joe is one of the few people left on the planet with a stick-shift crew car.  This is one of the few times that being an old fart comes in handy – I still remembered (vaguely) how to drive a stick shift vehicle, and actually enjoyed it after the first few stall-outs.

Weather tomorrow is iffy at best, so we may start the contest the same way we started the XC camp, with a rain  day.  The rest of the week looks a lot better though, so I’m confident that we’ll get a good contest in, and maybe even I can shake off my weather curse once and for all ;-).

Stay tuned!

Frank (TA)