As seems to be traditional for soaring contests, the soaring weather for practice day was pretty good, although not without its share of blemishes. Lots of beautiful looking clouds stretching out to the horizon, with cloud bases that started out around 5000 msl and later went to 6000 around Dansville, and to 7000further south around Harris Hill.
The sniffer (that was me today) was launched around noon, and after a bit of struggle I was able to get to cloudbase. It seemed a little odd to me at the time that the lift (weak and ratty) wasn’t really consistent with the spectacular looking clouds, but I wrote it off to incompetence on my part. However, others were having trouble too (Roy McMaster later told me that he almost landed out off tow!).
By the time the gate opened for the practice task at 1pm, most gliders had gotten high enough and started streaming out the gate. Within about 15 minutes the majority of the fleet had started, including me. However, I couldn’t find much in the way of lift, and decided to return and restart, but eventually had to give it up and land and relight. I struggled back up from the relight, and finally got started again an hour later, at about 2:15 or so. After the two close-in mandatory turnpoints at Loon Lake and Hornell, I went south (downwind) and eventually turned at Millerton, near Harris Hill. The further south I got, the better the soaring conditions got, so by the time I got to Millerton I was at 7000 msl and feeling pretty good. Unfortunately, what goes south must go north, at least if it wants to complete the task, and so I started slogging north toward Dansville, running through the same soaring condition changes, but in reverse order; as I got further north, conditions and cloud bases sagged again until I was down to 4000 again, and taking any climb I could get.
The task was a 2.5hr MAT, and I was going to arrive under time, so I had the bright idea that I would extend the task a bit by going to 52 Swain Ski Area, and my flight computer told me that I could do that and get home with a couple of hundred feet to spare (over the 1-mile 1200 msl finish height). Being a flatland pilot, it never occurred to me that getting home from Swain Ski on final glide would involve dodging trees on the high ground between the turnpoint and the airport – man is that scary! My ClearNav system kept telling me I was still OK, well above FG for the airport, and the ClearNav amoeba showed me that I was going to clear the high ground OK, but for the longest time (about 300 years, I think), I couldn’t see the airport or the town of Dansville, but I certainly could see the farms and trees going under my wingtip about 300 feet below. At one point I was so low over the terrain that I could easily see my shadow, and it looked almost as big as my glider itself! Thank goodness I had a fair bit of experience with my ClearNav and its glide-range ‘amoeba’ feature, or I would have surely had a heart attack halfway through the glide. Even so, I have decided to cross 52 Swain Ski off my list of approved final glide tuneup turnpoints!
After flying tonight, the contest management put out a nice welcome mat with a hors d’oeuvre and beer/wine spread in the hangar – very nice. Later, Hank Nixon (UH/OH/K21) will be hosting a ‘beginners class’, and he has suggested I should attend to help. I told him I was probably more suited for a student than a teacher, but I would do my best ;-).
Tomorrow’s popular weather is calling for mostly sunny, high of around 75, with light winds from the south. XC Skies seems to think we will see top of lift in the 7000′ msl category, with clouds in the southern part of the soaring area, so we might have a pretty nice contest day – stay tuned!
Frank (TA)
Hors d’oeuvre
and beer
