Sunday May 12 at the 2013 Mifflin Sports Class Nationals

Well, the 2013 Sports Class Nationals sure opened with a bang today!  Normally a Mifflin contest will see maybe one ridge day during a regional, and maybe two during a Nationals.  I’ve been coming here for at least 10 years, and this is the first time I have ever experienced a ridge run on the very first day!  No time to ease into the ‘Mifflin mindset’, no opportunity to refamiliarize oneself with the terrain – just go for broke hair-on-fire ridge-running for 4 hours, right out of the box!

Winds were forecast to be 270 at 25-30kt, which is a bit westerly for Mifflin ridges, but I was seeing between 270 and 290 on my ClearNav unit.  The task was a 4-hour one-turn MAT (you had a choice of McConnellsburg, Dickey’s Mt or Orbisonia)  with no repeating turnpoints allowed.  The 4-hour min time and the no-repeat rule made for some interesting task planning, especially with a wind forecast that promised to make the northern half of the task area (where the ridges are much more east-west than north-south) problematic.  I chose to stay in the southern half, going no further north than Mifflin, but this forced me to make a longer upwind transition to the main ridge as I didn’t want to take the normal route past State College to Lockhaven.  However, once out on task I was seeing 280-290 degrees for the winds,  and I believe the pilots who did the standard routing had no problems getting to Lockhaven and back.

Down on the ridges, the turbulence was so bad that most pilots, including myself, were forced to stay a bit higher just to preserve their bodies, canopies, and aircraft from being churned up like a milkshake.  I have at least learned to stow away all my loose cockpit items into a ‘ridge bag’, but the turbulence was so bad that my food bars, bananas, apples, and my spare cellphone, normally stored in a lunch back behind my seat, all rained down on me at one time or another during the flight.  Evan Ludeman (T8) commented that he became very good at catching his sunglasses case as it periodically circumnavigated his cockpit.

In another interesting “Truth is stranger than fiction” moment, it appears that Condor ace Daniel Sazhin may have won the day in the Club Class championship in his cherry red 1-26.  It was kind of cool to see Daniel out on course, driving along with the 1-26’s nose pitched *waaayyy* down to keep the speed up.  This is the same guy who (team flying with Ron Schwarz) won his first-ever real-life competition last year at the 1-26 Championships.  God help us if he ever gets a real glider! ;-).

Flarm proved its worth once again, especially valuable in this setting, where you often have multiple opposite-direction encounters on the ridge.  Even though the visibility was great today, those damned gliders are still just about impossible to spot when approaching head-on.  Most of the time there is some altitude difference that helps with detecting and avoiding opposite direction traffic, but sometimes there isn’t.  Erik Nelson (5E) and I found ourselves nose-to-nose late in the day with zero altitude difference, and neither one of us saw the other before the Flarm alert.  Even after the alert I couldn’t see Erik, and I don’t think he could see me either.  I was southbound, so I decided to maneuver sharply to the right, hoping that a) that would make me more visible, and b) it is the expected maneuver for a southbound pilot. Just as I rolled sharply to the right, Erik pulled up sharply, and ‘poof’ there was his glider.  As we passed with about 50′ clearance, I heard Erik say “Thank you Flarm!”  Whatever else you say about Flarm here in the U.S., it is clearly making glider avoidance *much* easier.  (Actually, it is really scary how few gliders I been able to detect without Flarm, even with my recently upgraded vision) .  As a guy who goes to a lot of contests, and is therefore at higher risk than the average pilot, I can safely say that Flarm has significantly decreased my wife’s chances of cashing in on my life insurance (and she tells me she’s OK with that).  If you don’t have a Flarm and you are thinking of flying in a competition, PLEASE consider adding one to your glider – either a purchased ‘brick’ or a Williams Soaring rental unit.  I’ll thank you, your fellow competition pilots will thank you, and maybe even your wife will thank you ;-).

Tomorrow’s popular weather forecast is for mostly sunny with a high near 55 degrees.  West winds 8-15 mph, with gusts as high as 25.  A quick look at XCSkies shows potential for very good soaring weather at 2pm, but there is also some indication that the day might degrade very quickly later in the day – Stay tuned!

Frank (TA)

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