Well, we flew today, but not very much and not very far. CD Erik Mann guaranteed us yesterday that we would at least grid today, and so we did. Weatherman Baud Litt’s forecast at the 0930 pilot’s meeting started with “I have my glider assembled and on the grid”, so we knew he was at least optimistic enough about the weather to go that far. He told us that the overcast currently over us *might* burn off enough to get in a task, but it could go either way. So, we all assembled and gridded, and eventually, launched. Most pilots were staying up, but the overcast was still in place, and nobody was getting much over 3000′ msl (about 2500′ agl), and that was only over the high ground just north of the airport.
After about half an hour of more and more depressing pilot reports, the CD gave it up and cancelled the day for both the Sports and FAI classes, and declared that the day was officially converted from a cross-country race to a somewhat tongue-in-cheek ‘Last man landing’ contest. We all tried to stay up, but one by one we found ourselves in the landing pattern. I managed to outlast most of the fleet, but was unable to outlast feather-weight Erik Nelson in 5E, John Seymour in SM (cheating with an 18m ship), and of course Baud Litt in LBL, who not only won the ‘Last man’ contest but actually went out and flew cross-country for two hours while the rest of us stayed in final glide range of the airport!
Dinner tonight was BBQ pulled pork on buns, with baked potatoes and green beans, with lots of yummy desserts. I had to make do with the scrapings of a carrot cake, as my fellow glider pilots had made off with the rest while I wasn’t looking :-(. While I was sitting at a table trading lies with other contestants, an eerily familiar person sat down and asked me if I recognized him. I admitted he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him (a not uncommon occurrence with me), so he introduced himself as Bruce Miller, and then the coin dropped – he is an experienced glider pilot and instructor from Texas with whom I had recently flown in Condor as part of my XC instruction series. I had never met him before in RL, but I had asked him to send me a photo so I’d have a person to put with the name. Turns out he was visiting Washington DC on business and decided to drive up to Fairfield to look in on the contest – what a small world!
Yesterday (Monday) was a rain day, so I decided to fly the Monday Night Soaring series in Condor. There are now three races on Mondays in Condor – the relatively recent MNS Europe race that starts at 1:30pm eastern time (6:30 – 7:30 pm in Europe), then the original MNS East and MNS West races at 7pm and 10pm eastern time respectively. Sean Fidler (F2) forgot his joystick, but he eventually found one in time to fly the east and west coast races, and John Mittel (BZ) from Alabama joined in too. We didn’t win, but we did OK. After the east coast race at 7pm and before the 10pm one, Karl Striedieck returned to the field from dinner, and asked if he could try his hand flying formation in Condor with Sean Fidler (F2). Karl sat down at my PC and within a short while was able to tuck in fairly closely to Sean’s glider, even with the viewing and depth perception limitations imposed by my small laptop LCD monitor – pretty neat!
Tomorrow’s popular weather forecast is for much more sun (could hardly be less) than today, but windy. Unfortunately it won’t be the kind of wind that might make for a ridge day, just the kind that breaks up the thermals – ugh!
Stay tuned!
Frank (TA)
