Day 3 at Uvalde

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Today was a fun, but hard day of flying.  The weather forecast was for ‘a little softer than yesterday (yesterday was a classic Uvalde day), with less cu’s’.  Well, as it turned out it was a LOT softer than yesterday, and the cu’s were literally few and far between.  Once again I started out with the U.S. 15m team and they graciously allowed me (and others) to tag along and listen in on their team frequency.  What impresses me most about these guys (and gal)  is the professionalism and optimism with which they ply their trade.  We started well below max start height, and we were clearly going off into mostly blue conditions – no problem.  Hundreds of miles from home, and they are not only chugging along, but doing so at mach 8.  Today I was able to stay with most of the group for about 2hrs of a 4.5hr, 500km+ TAT, which is now my personal best.  Maybe by the end of the contest I’ll be able to stay with them the entire way (dream on, Frank).

This pre-world meet here at Uvalde is probably the closest I’ll ever come to competing at the world level, and I have to say I wasn’t really prepared for the pace and intensity of world-level competition.  Each 24-hour period here is jam-packed with flying and non-flying tasks,  to the point where you have to schedule bowel movements between the morning meeting and grid time (ok, not quite that bad, but close) ;-).  Here’s my typical schedule:

  • 0645 – alarm goes off – fumble for a few minutes getting dressed and heat some coffee, grab batteries and PDA, head for airport
  • 0700-0815 – assemble, ballast, tow out to grid
  • 0830-0930 – breakfast at McDonalds so I can use their internet connection (none available from the micro-castle) to answer emails.
  • 1015- 1115  – morning meeting.  Much longer and more elaborate than a typical U.S. contest morning meeting.  The weather guy even wears a tie!
  • 1210 – grid time.  Have to be by your glider and ready to push out onto the grid
  • 1230  – 1830 – flying
  • 1830 – 2000 – turn in scores, disassemble,
  • 2000 – 2200 – shower, dinner, write post (I’m writing this post at 10:30pm – oops!)
  • 2200 – in bed, read for 10 minutes, drop off to sleep
See a whole lot of free time in there?  If so, please let me know, as I have been trying to find it now for 3 days without much  success ;-).
BTW, a few words about the team flying experience.  In a phrase “It’s great!”.  This is a skill we don’t practice here in the U.S. and that’s a shame.  When  our guys get to a world meet, they have very little practice with team flying, and an ingrained bias against it from all their U.S. competition days.   In world competitions, this just kills us.  My personal experience with this over the last three days is that team flying is FUN, and very instructive.  I have been able to listen in as team members discuss the line they are taking on the current leg, and what they are thinking about when deciding when to turn for the next leg, and climb/weather reports.  Even more experienced competitors can greatly benefit from this sort of free, but very professional flow of information, and so my opinion of this practice has changed dramatically from “who cares – that’s just those U.S. team guys” to “hey, we should all be doing this”.  I know there have been some rule changes to allow ‘in flight mentoring’ in regional contests, but I’m now thinking we should expand this to include real team flying, with the proviso that team freqs are openly available to all competitors so they can listen in or not as they please.  If you happen to be running with a team, you might want to switch to the team freq for safety if nothing else, and you might even learn something in the process ;-).
And another note about FLARM; this is clearly the greatest thing for contest soaring since sliced bread, and I can’t wait to see this instrument in every XC pilot’s cockpit.  Another reader (Evan Ludeman) emailed me to ask for some photos of portable FLARM installations here, and I believe Tiffany Fidler (crew for Sean Fidler, F2) took some photos today and is going to post them on Soaring Cafe.  I took the attached photo of my own installation with my cellphone, so don’t beat me up over the quality ;-).
That’s all for tonight – its 2300 and I’m an hour late for my appointment with my micro-castle’s bed! ;-).
TA

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