Ace weather guesser Richard Kellerman (QV) gave us the usual good news – bad news routine this morning. Winds from the south, apparently measured at around 30kt (Yikes!) out of the south, with the possibility of overdevelopment from the east and high cirrus from the west. Lions and tigers, oh my! There was some good news in all this – the cloud base would be higher, and the lift values were forecast in the 4-6kt range.
Immediately after the morning meeting, we got to enjoy another adventure, as we got the word that we were going to get to grid at the north end of the runway, due to the aforementioned high winds from the south. The north end grid situation at Seminole is quite a bit more dicey than the normal south end operation, because the runway is quite a bit narrower at this end, and there isn’t any good way of cycling towplanes through the launch. Towplanes have to land on the southern runway extension, then taxi across the entry road and between two rows of gliders, sometimes with the towplane and glider wings overlapping each other. It works, but it ain’t pretty.
I happened to be in the very front of the grid today, so I wasn’t treated to the full experience. However, I did get the thrill of digging out from about 1000′ while contemplating the prospect of landing back over the grid and not being able to launch again for at least an hour or more, while my teammate John Mittell (BZ) kept reporting that the view was nice from 3300′. Anyway, I finally managed to get back up, and to reconnect with BZ, and there actually weren’t very many relights required to get the launch completed. After a while, the air seemed completely filled with gliders – everywhere you looked there were gaggles upon gaggles of gliders, all climbing at about 1kt, struggling to get up to the 4000′ or so cloudbase.
The task for the day was actually pretty complex – a 4-circle TAT where we went northwest to Cheryl Lane, then east to Leesburg, then southwest to Green Swamp, then east again to Chalet Suzanne, then home (thankfully making the final glide downwind!). By the time the start gate opened, conditions were still not improving significantly, so CD John Good decided to reduce the task time from 2.5 hours to 2.0 hours, which was a great thing IMHO. By the time we actually got the gate open, most gliders were up at cloudbase and anxious to get going in order to (hopefully) beat the worsening conditions. BZ and I started as soon as we could beat our way upwind to actually get into the start circle and out again. Out on course, most pilots were just trying to stay high and to stay connected to the clouds. There were lots of markers down the course, but many weren’t climbing well (or even at all). Thermals tended to be blown way out of shape, resulting in gaggles that were anything but round, as individual pilots chased a very elusive core all over the place. The northern part of the task area was a lot better than the southern part, with many gliders getting lower and lower as they attempted to get into the last circle with enough altitude to get home.
BZ and I managed the first two circles in good order, and thought we were doing OK as we approached the third one (Green Swamp). We had been flying for a while with John Seymour (SM) and Rich Owens (FA) and it seemed like we were doing pretty good in comparison. However, we all started getting lower and lower, with nothing happening in the way of climbs. Finally we all wrapped up in a crappy 1-2kt climb that nobody wanted to leave, because the conditions down south looked even worse. In this particular thermal, I was fortunate enough to be climbing right with SM, but BZ couldn’t find the core and had to leave. I stayed in the thermal, breaking up the team and earning myself a dressing-down for not maintaining team integrity (he was right, I was wrong). By the time we got back together, we were both too low to do anything but clip the last circle and run toward Flanders to land out. On the way there, we managed to tag separate mercy thermals and claw our way back home. The only nice thing about the entire day was having a 20kt tailwind wafting us homeward as we scrabbled for lift in our ratty-assed 0.8kt thermals. As it turned out, BZ’s ratty-assed thermal was less ratty-assed than my ratty-assed thermal, so he got to final glide before I did, and beat me home – again!
At the end of the day, about 1/3 of the fleet didn’t make it around the course, landing mostly at airports or back at Seminole. For the Seniors, a 1/3 landout rate is almost unheard of, so this was indeed a difficult day.
Tomorrow is a scheduled crew day, so we all can rest a bit and lick our wounds (and make up even better stories to explain our shortcomings) Stay tuned as we resume competition on Wednesday!
Frank (TA)
