Day 2 at Fairfield (US Region 4 North) Contest

Well, the weather gods smiled on us today at Fairfield, and we got in a great ridge day.  CD Erik Mann called a 3.5hour MAT with the first turnpoint at the traditional entry to the ridge system.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that he also made it a ‘long MAT’ with 5 mandatory turnpoints, *and* declared that turnpoints could not be reused.  The 5 mandatory turnpoints used up all but a couple of the ‘normal’ ridge turnpoints, so we all had to scratch our heads to figure out what to do with any remaining time (and at the expected ridge speeds, that was going to be significant).

As usual, one of the biggest challenges at Fairfield is simply getting to the ridge system, as this involves a 30-mile upwind trek across the Chambersburg valley.  At start time we had good, but quite narrow and turbulent thermals to about 4500′. The turbulence suggested wave, and several pilots reported getting into 4-6kt wave to 8000′ or so, but it was a tossup as to whether a wave climb was faster than running streets to the ridge system.  Personally, I have decided that wave is a figment of overtaxed glider pilot brains, and it doesn’t really exist.  At least, I’ve never been able to make wave work here :-(

Once on the ridge, it was ‘Katy bar the door’ conditions – no problem running 100-110kts dry with my new supership, with the occasional need to slow down and pull up for a transition.  The trees were turning colors, so the scenery (when I had the time to look) was spectacular, and hawks and buzzards were all over the place.  It was possible to get into trouble, and several experienced pilots landed out a LONNGGG way from home.  Getting home again was another challenge, as by this time all the clouds had dried up and the winds had weakened significantly, making the ridges and high ground on the east side of the Chambersburg valley problematic.  I got lucky and hooked up with Tim Welles (W3) for the trip home, and was more than willing to let him do most of the work. The only thing I had to worry about was the fact that Tim’s ship has a motor – so he can be a lot braver than me ;-).

The locals here at Fairfield have a neat way of getting home at the end of the day. The route home is blocked by a series of low mountain ranges, but there are some gaps.  In particular, one gap goes from the High Rock Overlook turnpoint at the extreme western boundary of the P-40 prohibited area, right to the Fairfield airport via the back side of Jack’s Mountain and over the ski hill (Ski Liberty). Despite the assurance of the locals that this is an easy transition, I have been very reluctant to try it myself because it looks somewhat suicidal – no place at all to land if it doesn’t work out.  However, this year I was determined to figure out how to fly the route, so I found a really neat program called ‘IGC Flight Replay’ that uses a satellite images (a la Google Earth, but public domain) to figuratively put you in the cockpit for any IGC file.  I went back over several years and pulled up a lot of Baud Litt (LBL)’s flights out of Fairfield, especially his winter flights that almost always ended with the High Rock return.  By seeing what Baud was seeing out his cockpit, I was able to convince myself that I would be able to recognize all the significant landmarks and make the right decisions in real life, and that is exactly what happened today.  I knew precisely how much altitude I needed at the High Rock radio tower (huge red/white broadcast tower – can’t be missed), which roads to follow through the valleys, and exactly how Jack’s Mountain was going to look from that vantage point.  It turned out to be a piece of cake, because I had, almost literally, “been there – done that – got the T-shirt” before.  Many of you know me as an ardent advocate of the Condor Soaring Flight Simulator for cross-country race training, but it’s not just Condor that is useful for race training; I use Google Earth for eliminating doubtful/missing/too-narrow airstrips from contest site waypoint databases, and now the wonderful ‘IGC Flight Replay’ program for previewing tricky transitions or routes.

Tomorrow’s weather sounds a bit iffy – maybe we’ll get a 3rd day in, and maybe not.  Either way I’m going to be blasting out of here as soon as possible to get my ‘new’ supership up to Heinz’s (Heinz of Monty and Heinz Soaring) place for it’s first annual ‘spiffing up and TA-ification’.  In addition to getting all the normal dings and bruises repaired, it will come out with the ‘SZ’ replaced with ‘TA’ – yay!

Stay Tuned

Frank (SZ for one more day – then TA again)