Wednesday was a no-fly day here, so many of us occupied ourselves as best we could with maintenance tasks and watching the new arrivals roll in.  I helped Dennis Linnekin (DL) and Rob Ware (DI) get their Flarm units configured and operating, and I also was able to repair a small problem with the parking brake on my trailer.  Ken Sorenson (KM), Jim Garrison/Ben Johnson (T) and Tim Wells (W3 – aka “Heinekin!”) were among the arrivals, as were  a number of others.  As the following Ben Johnson photo shows, Seminole GP is getting more and more populous each day.

View from the eastern parking area toward the clubhouse

Last night, after a hard day of doing nothing, a Ben Johnson & Jim Garrison (T), Ken and Michelle Sorenson (KM), CD John Good (X), John Mittel and I (BZ/TA) and John Earlywine (RN) ventured into the restaurant district on rt 27 and had dinner at ‘Greek’ – a newly established hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant.  The ambiance left a lot to be desired, but the food was pretty good, and the conversation and camaraderie was superb.

Yesterday was another weak blue day with an abrupt inversion layer at 3000′, with winds from the north-northwest at about 5-10kt.  Most pilots either stayed within glide range of Seminole. or did the north-south route up and down rt 33 from Flanders in the south to Grass Roots/Flying Baron in the north.  However, three of us – TA, BZ, and newly arrived ‘rocket man’ Ken Sorenson (KM) ventured out on a TAT task.   The task was the same one my my pair-flying teammate John Mittel (BZ) and I did on Tuesday, except reversed (Green Swamp, Wines, Leesburg) so that our final glide leg would be downwind.   Ken Sorenson had just arrived from Texas the afternoon before, and was eager to get some Florida air under his wings, so he was interested in flying a task as well.

Ken got launched around 1230, and stuck, and BZ and I got up around 1300.  We were all grinding around in weak thermals with tops around 2500 msl when I heard a call from KM announcing that he was starting the task and asking if we were coming too – yikes!  Well, I had been just about to suggest to BZ that we stay within glide range of SGP like all the other sane pilots, but I wasn’t about to pass up a challenge like that – so off we went!  After a while we caught a glimpse of Ken way out in front of us, and eventually we were able to reel him in (with a 2-ship formation, I think we were able to cruise with a bit more confidence and speed than Ken could as a solo pilot on a weak, blue, low day), and then we flew as a 3-ship for another 10-15 miles or so, almost to the back of the 10-mile Green Swamp circle.  The three of us were in a nice thermal just about 2 miles from the back of the cylinder, and I suggested to BZ that we anchor our first turn there, so as to make the drift in the climb part of our second (downwind) leg.  BZ agreed and we left the thermal on the new course, but KM left on the original course toward the back of the cylinder.  Maybe Ken was planning to hit the back and then catch us back up again, but instead he got low and had to divert to an Midway Lake airport and dig out from about 1000′ agl – oops!.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, BZ and I continued to work between 2000 to 3000′ msl, with thermals in the 3-4kt range, and only got below 2000′ a couple of times.  We managed to arrange our route so we were almost always within glide range of an airport, as neither of us was particularly enthusiastic about a field landing during practice (or any time for that matter!).  We got into the Wines circle without any major problems, but as we came north toward Leesburg, we noticed that conditions were getting steadily weaker.  We saw some markers out ahead as we approached SGP, but they were all below us – and didn’t seem to be climbing very well.  We eventually arrived at a thermal marked by Jim Garrison and Ben Johnson in their Duo (T) at about 1500′ msl, and were able to climb (very slowly) back up to about 2500.  We pushed on north for the Leesburg circle, but we found nothing but completely still air all the way down to 1500′ msl, at which point we abandoned the task and slinked back to SGP with our tails between our legs.  As it turned out, Ken did considerably better than us after digging out from Midway Lake; he went considerably deeper into the Wines circle, and also managed to get closer to the Leesburg circle than we did.  However, we got him on speed – about 50mph for us and about 47 for KM :-)))).

Yesterday was also our first good test of the new-improved Flarm system performance.  As readers might recall, it was at the Seniors last year that we all discovered we had a severe range degradation problem – whose cause was ultimately found to be RF interference from the heavy aviation-band radio traffic common here in Florida.  The Flarm folks ultimately came up with a fix that was added to the ‘brick’ units before they shipped, and retrofitted to the portables.  Yesterday we probably had at least 20 Flarm units active in the SGP area, and the range performance appears to be excellent.  While I’m on the subject, it also appears that there are very few pilots WITHOUT Flarm at this contest – so I’m hopeful that Flarm adoption within the U.S. soaring community will soon be as universal here as it has been in Europe for some time.  As a multiple-save beneficiary of Flarm myself, I have a significant vested interest (my own precious rear-end!) in widespread adoption of Flarm!

Today’s forecast is much like yesterday’s – winds out of the north at about 10kt, no chance of clouds whatsoever, climbs to around 3000-3500 msl well to the south, and to less than 3000 to the north – oh boy ;-).  Stay tuned!

Frank (TA)