Day 3 at 2012 CCSC XC Camp

As I write this in my Micro-Castle at 9:50 pm before hitting the hay, Day 3 is in the bag here, and I’m actually beginning to believe I may have at least temporarily shaken the bad weather gremlin that has been following me around from contest to contest.  We had a rain/Condor day on Day 1, and a late start on Day 2, but today was a pretty good soaring day for Ohio in June.   The winds were from the northeast at about 10kt, with clouds in the southern half of the area with good climbs of 3-4 kt to 5500-6000, and blue in the northern half with 2-3 kt climbs to about 5000′.  All 5 groups had very good days, with all mentors reporting that their groups flew well and had  good time.  We have also been able to get backseat rides for almost all of the ‘audit’ participants in our two-place ships, something that worried me a bit at the start of the camp.

My group today consisted of Rick Hoffman (SP, ASW-27), John Mittell (BZ, ASW-27), Glenn Betzoldt (W, Discus 2a), and a recent graduate from Group 5, local flier Dan Reagan (MK, 304cz).  Our task for the day was to go northeast about 50 miles along I-71, then back down south about 60-70 miles, then back to CCSC, with a 2-hour min time.  We gathered at our rally point in good order, and we were soon working our way upwind.  We had clouds for about the first 20 miles or so, and then it was all blue, blue, blue.  I was proud of the way the group spread out between thermals to increase our search area, and at one point we had all 5 gliders in a line abreast spread over about 1/3 mile – neat!  At one  point Glenn Betzoldt (W) got pretty low, and we were starting to worry we were going to have a landout, but he found some lift and scratched his way right back up into the group – good going Glenn!

We are hosting lunches and dinners at the field every day, as we have such a heavy lecture schedule that nobody has the time to go offsite, and tonight’s dinner was mashed potatoes, green beans, bread, and more fried chicken than you can shake a stick at.  We were all told to eat as much as possible, because what we didn’t eat was sure to show up on the next  day’s luncheon menu ;-).  Speaking of the heavy schedule, I was running a bit low on my supply of GatorAde, but I was having trouble finding a time to make the 20-mile round trip to the local Wal-Mart.  Finally, I was able to get there and back this morning, but I had to sacrifice my early morning run/walk to do it – bummer.

Yesterday, I asked Dan Harder, a good friend and an audit participant in the camp, to write a paragraph or two about his experiences and perceptions of the camp, so I have included them below.

————————————————–           Written by  Dan Harder  —————————————————-

Day 2 got off to a good start, i.e. it wasn’t raining. Maybe Frank’s curse has been lifted. The morning review of day 1 consisted mostly on how not to fly, using my flight track of yesterday’s Condork race as primary example. The safety briefing focused on gaggle safety, etiquette and technique. I’ve had practically no gaggle flying experience so this was on the list of things I wanted to take away from this camp. After a lecture on efficient use of thermals, we had lunch and everyone started assembling for
a late 2:00 PM grid time. The day’s forecast called for NW winds up to 20 kts and climbs of 2 to 4 kts with cloud base at around 5k, giving Q’s in the early afternoon and things getting blue later in the day.  Frank knows his weather stuff because that’s pretty much what we got.  I had the good fortune of flying with Rob Cluxton in his DG1000 (1K) today. Our group included J.P. Steward (X8), John Dudley (D2), and Greg Murry (1SR). Once we all gathered to our rally point and got to cloud base, we went right out on task: CCSC to Lebanon, to Dayton, to Clinton and back to CCSC (the so called inner loop). At least, that was the plan. After Dayton we ventured back to CCSC before going to Clinton, then added Fricke, then out in the blue back to Lebanon. At this point I could almost hear Frank in the back of my head saying “know your electronics cold!”,  because after fumbling around with MC settings and trying to add points to the task, I realized I spent way too much time looking at my PDA. ‘Guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t PIC. Anyway, once the rest of our group gathered again over Lebanon, we had final glide with over 2k of safety. The rest of the group decided to go back home, as they were a little lower and saw nothing but blue ahead. I’ll admit, it sure felt strange being out in a big blue abyss, but not wanting to waste altitude, Rob turned south to Loveland before heading home .

The first flyable day went off without any real glitches, and no one I know of landed out. I got a chance to become familiar with flying in gaggles (which was a little nerve-racking at first), and to see how long the legs really are on a nice glass ship. Tomorrow’s forecast looks like a flyable day, not to mention the rest of the week…. Looks like the  rain man (TA) is off the hook.

Dan Harder (the unofficial DH)

————————————————–           Written by  Dan Harder  —————————————————-

Popular weather forecast for the last two days of the contest are for Sunny with highs in the 80’s – don’t know if I can handle another two days of good soaring weather!

Stay tuned,

Frank (TA)