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When I first got here at Logan, I had a very interesting conversation with a fellow Condor pilot (and very good western soaring pilot) David Leonard (ZL), who told me that he expected major ups and downs in the score sheet over the course of the 15m nationals here because the Logan soaring area is so challenging.  At the time I kind of blew it off, but his prediction has come home in spades after today.  1st overall John Cochrane (BB) had a back problem of some sort that prevented him from flying, and 2nd overall Gary Itner (P7) got spit off the ridge today and landed out before the second turnpoint, leaving the top 5 places up for grabs.  Who would’ve thunk it! ;-).

OK, so we got up this morning and noticed a cloud shelf encroaching from the south and the west, with rain shafts visible by the 10am meeting time.  The good news was the winds were setting up so the main ridges should work, so the task callers decided the best bet was to call a task that allowed everyone to stay on the main ridge and not risk mass landouts in the Bear Lake and eastern valleys.  The call was a 3-hr MAT with only one mandatory turnpoint at Mink Creek.  The turnpoint layout at Logan has 3 turnpoints on the main ridge (Mink Creek, Sugar Creek, and Jardine) that allow pilots to run a 30-mile segment of the ridge pretty easily (but by no means a slam dunk, as Gary Ittner found out!).  The  ridge was working pretty well, allowing speeds in the high 80’s and low 90’s.  However, these speeds meant that you couldn’t just stay on the ridge without running over the 11 turnpoint limit before running out the 3hr minimum time, so you had to figure out a way to extend one or more of those 60-mile round trips without getting too slow in the process.  Tim Taylor (TT) did this by running a cloud street to Mead Peak (a gutsy move) and then back to Sherman Peak, and then back to Mink Creek (another gutsy move) and then back into the loop-de-loop.  Bruno Vassel (B4) chanced a run south under the cloud shelf to Porcupine Creek and got low and slow in the process.  I solved the time/distance problem by taking a wrong turn on the ridge about 5 miles north of Jardine and winding up at 7000′ msl on the foothills just east of Logan airport.  After dumping half my water and spending 15 minutes digging out – problem solved! ;-).

However, the really amazing flights were turned in by day winner Mark Keene (7K aka KS for this contest) and Dave Mockler (2xx).  These two pilots decided that an east-west cloud street just looked too good to pass up, so they decided to go for it.  They flew away from the safe ridge task all the way back past the Salt River range, and then back along the same route home, averaging a whopping 95mph doing it!  This kind of flight is what makes soaring so exciting, that two pilots decide to do something completely different, and whip up on the rest of the fleet in the process – good going Mark and Dave!!

After all the dust settled in the scoring room, Rick Indrebo (YC) wound up 7th for the day with 84.33mph and moved to 1st place overall with a 4646 total.  Dave Mockler (2xx) wound up 2nd for the day with 93.81mph and is now sitting in 2nd place overall with 4575, just 71 points out of 1st.  Frank Paynter (TA) was 6th for the day with 89.85mph and moved back up to 3rd place overall with 4562, just 13 points out of 2nd and 84 out of first.  What had been an Ittner/Cochrane show until now has a completely new cast – wow!

At the end of the day we had a wonderful dinner in the Leading Edge Aviation hangar featuring hamburgers, cheeseburgers, brats, and all the fixins (including homemade cookies – yum!).  And, nature decided to add a nice finishing touch to the day by providing a spectacular sunset complete with double rainbow (see attached image taken by trusty crew Mark Hawkins from just outside the micro castle, looking to the southeast.

Well, there has been no shortage of excitement here at Logan and there are three more contest days to go, so don’t touch that dial!

TA,