March 15, 2013, Seminole Florida, USA

It’s COLD down here!  Everybody (with the possible exception of wingman BZ who insists on wearing shorts) was walking around with jackets on and hoods pulled up.  When Jim Garrison and Ben Johnson (T) pulled up to their Duo, Ron Ridenour (CGC, also a Duo) threw a snowball at them!!  Think about this – a snowball in Florida?  Here are some choice Ben Johnson (T) photos to illustrate the point.

Gary Carter has a new set of wing covers, and discovered this morning he couldn’t get them off – he had to wait until the heavy frost melted enough so he could get the water off the covers before he could get them off the wings – its COLD down here!

At the morning meeting, illustrious (adjective compliments of teammate BZ – feel free to email me with additional ones, as I’m starting to run out) weatherman Richard Kellerman (QV), asked us if we wanted the short version or the long version.  The short version was “blue, windy, low, and weak”.  The long version was the same, except with more words justifying the first four ;-).  Many of the audience had already done their own due diligence with respect to weather and had come to the same conclusion, but somehow hearing it from the ‘official’ weatherman made it a bit more ominous.

From where BZ and I were situated in the back of the grid, we could just barely make out the fact that CD John Good had launched a sniffer (in fact, I didn’t realize he had until I noticed this big white thing circling low over the west side of the field – it was Rob Cluxton (1K) in the ‘team DG’ G-1000).  When you are in the back of the bus at the Seniors you are in a completely different ZIP code than the front; at first you hear rumors of a launch, then you might start seeing some towplanes coming in and gliders going out (but still sorta remote from what you are doing); then the noises and activity gets a little louder and closer, and an hour or so later you get the feeling that you might actually get to fly today; then you kinda slap yourself a few times to wake up, get your cockpit in order, and get ready to go; then things START SPEEDING UP REAL FAST – and you are airborne!

This day, while I was still in the ‘rumors of a launch’ phase, I fired up my cockpit to put in the task, only to find out that WinPilot on my Avier (Vertica 2) had gone completely AWOL – clicking on the WP shortcut brought up a message that basically said “nanny nanny boo boo – you’re screwed!” – yikes!  I played with it a few minutes there on the grid to make sure that was indeed the case, and then I hitched a ride on a golf cart back to my Micro-Castle and was able to re-load WP-PRO V12 and get it going again before the ‘rumor of a launch’ reached the ‘REAL FAST’ phase.   This was the second time in two contest days that WP had flaked out on me, so I’m (again) thinking seriously of replacing it.  As I have said  here in the past, there is only one feature in WP that I use regularly and like in preference to other nav systems, and that is its wonderful vario-scaled lift dot bread-crumb track.  However, the author’s port from the PDA to the PNA is clearly half-assed, and he no longer responds to my or Tom Kelley’s emails (or anyone else’s that I know about), so it’s probably time to give it up and move on to something else.  I heard a rumor on the grid that SeeYou Mobile (SYM) has a similar vario-scaled bread-crumb feature, so I’m going to check that out between this contest and Perry (easy to do with Condor!!).

Anyway, back at the grid, Rich Owens (FA) and Rob Cluxton (1K) ground around at less than 2000′ for hours (literally) with no success until about 1:45 or so, when one or the other (or both) started getting climbs to north of 2500′, whereupon CD John Good launched the entire fleet in the hope that the day was starting to cook off.  He really didn’t have much choice at this point, as it takes well over an hour to launch the entire fleet, and the task can’t open until at least 15 minutes after the last glider’s wheel leaves the ground, so he was getting squeezed by the minimum task time of 1:30 (he had already sent us all to Task D) and the fast-approaching end of the day, predicted in the 5:00 range at the latest.  So, he made the call, and it turned out to be the right one – good job CD!

Milling around before the gate opened, we were all pretty much capped at 3000 – 3200′ msl, and the wind was making it hard to stay in the thermals.  However, we were staying up, and the visibility was excellent, and it appeared we might actually be able to make this work.  After the gate opened nobody seemed really anxious to leave for about 15 minutes, and then entire gaggles (and here at the Seniors, gaggles are wonders to behold) unwound themselves downcourse; it looked for all the world like someone had tied all the gliders in a gaggle together with some monofilament fishing line and then started pulling the line south.  BZ and I weren’t really ready to start, as we thought the day would continue to improve for another 30 minutes or so, and then stay at that level for a couple of more hours, but when the gaggle leaves, you either have to go with them or be left on your own – so we left ;-).

Weak blue day flying means that the ‘furball’ rules – you can’t generally go faster than the furball on your own, and if you try, you’ll eventually get low and be rolled over by the furball.  But, the furball itself is slow and disorganized and cantankerous.  I have heard the quote “I’d rather eat a bucket of dirt than fly a blue contest day” attributed to Karl Striedieck (KS – my apologies if I have this wrong) because of the necessity of staying with the furball.  It was frustrating for BZ and I too, as our team-flying skills were basically useless in furball flying.

At one point during the day, a group of 5 or 6 of us (KS, SM, BZ, TA, DL, and maybe one or two others) had broken free (temporarily) of the furball, and were cruising in a long line abreast past Grass Roots airport, sniffing out the next thermal.  We had already passed 2000′ on the way down, and everyone’s pucker factor had to be increasing dramatically, but everybody stayed in the line, knowing that the line had a better chance of finding lift than any one individual.  At about 1500′ msl, Dennis Linnekin (DL) pulled up in something, and soon enough the group was climbing in 1-2 kt.  We stayed in this to about 2000′ msl, and then went on to find a 2-4kt climb a mile or so down the road.  Unfortunately, as happens on these blue days, the furball caught us and we were right back where we started – we had been ‘incorporated into the Borg’.

At the end of the day, the task turned out to be reasonably easy, with 5-10 landouts at various places.  Kudos to CD John Good for pulling a contest day out of the trashcan and putting it instead on the ‘win’ column.

Dinner at the hangar was great again, and we all had a good time recanting the events of the day and getting on a mild buzz from the free beer.  Then it was off the showers (literally) and to bed for a well-earned sleep.

Since I’m writing this post the next morning, please accept my apologies for the late post and for the possible tense (present/past) confusion – my brain was completely fried last night so I just went to bed.  Weather for today looks better than yesterday, with lower winds, higher top-of-lift, and higher thermal values, so hopefully we will have a longer and faster task today, with maybe less of a furball situation – stay tuned

Frank (TA)