Thursday, April 25 – A confusing day at Perry

by  • 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a confusing contest day at any contest.  If it could go wrong today, it did.

The weather forecast for the day was for a very late developing day, if anything ever developed at all.  CD Richard Maleady had us grid at 12:30 versus the regular 12:00, and explained at the grid meeting that it might involve a late start and a short task.  A sniffer (PA, a beautiful Libelle) was sent up and promptly returned, citing steady 10kt sink.  After a significant wait (30-60 minutes I think), he was sent aloft again, and this time he stuck.  However, buy this time things were getting along in the day, so the actual launch didn’t start until 2:20pm – just about as late as you can get and still have any hope of a task (even with 6-7 towplanes, it takes about an hour to get all gliders launched at Perry – which means the last class can’t start until at least 3:45 pm, even if everything goes perfectly – and it never does).

My class (15m) was the first aloft, and conditions were poor to really bad.  We were able to hang on at about release altitude, but nobody was actually climbing.  Then after about half an hour, some were getting 2-3kt climbs to cloudbase at around 4000′ msl, but that was it.  When the 15 meter class was entirely launched, the CD called a gate opening time of 3:15 pm (more on this later), but there was a lot of bitching on the radio about the inability to climb, and the poor prognosis for a ‘fair and safe’ task.  As the launch continued, there were more and more of us milling around looking for sunny spots on the ground, as the clouds, as dark as they were, didn’t seem to be producing any lift.  As each class got launched, a gate opening time was announced, but then we started getting multiple gate-opening delay announcements.  Many of us had finally gotten to altitude and in position for a good start, only to find that we now had to wait another 10-15 minutes, and in many cases this had the unintended effect of swapping the gliders who were high and ready to go with the gliders that were low.  In addition, there were a bunch of pilots who missed the announcement of the delayed opening, and started out on task before the gate opened.

The result of this mass confusion was a whole lot of land-backs from pilots who were high and in position to start, but got too low to reconnect after the delay announcements, and a whole lot of ‘No Valid Start’ scores from all the pilots who missed the delay announcements.   According to the preliminary results on the SSA website:

  • Of the 19 gliders in the 15m class,  only 6 have non-zero scores, either due to not being able to get away, or due to a non-valid start.
  • In the Standard class, only 4 of the 8 gliders got away, and one of the land-backs was Biff Huss (H7) who landed back at around 3:30pm, then took a 4:10pm relight, and then finally landed back at Perry without getting away around 5pm.  If Biff had managed to get away and start the task, he most likely would have been finishing in the dark, after official sunset.  
  • In Sports class only 9 of 18 have non-zero scores, apparently all due to land-backs
  • In 18 m, everyone got around the course (which I guess goes to show that there is no substitute for span) but the score for day-winner Ken Sorenson (KM) was only 765 points, due to the sub-standard minimum task time.

Just on the face of it, looking at the preliminary scores, it appears to me that the only class where everyone got a fair chance to compete was the 18m class – in all the other classes it just amounted to dumb luck as to who got away and who didn’t.  Once away from Perry, conditions improved considerably (hard to get any worse!) and most who got started were able to finish the task.  As I was one of the many land-backs in the 15 m class I can’t rightly be considered any kind of objective in my assessment.  In fact, I fervently hope Richard sees the light and voids the results for at least the 15m, Std, and Sports classes.  Hey, anything can happen! ;-).

Popular weather for tomorrow is calling for mostly sunny, a high near 78, and east winds 5 to 8mph.  Unfortunately the forecast for Saturday (last contest day) isn’t all that great, so tomorrow could be the end of the contest.  Sure would be nice to have a real ‘Perry day’ before we all have to pack up and leave.

Stay tuned!

Frank