Day 4 at the Mifflin National (er…Regional)

4-hour 'long' MAT, completed in about 5-6 hours ;-).

4-hour ‘long’ MAT, completed in about 5-6 hours ;-).

The title is an exaggeration, but not by much.  We have had 4 contest days here at Mifflin; two of them have been 4 hour tasks, and the ones that weren’t 4 hours were 3 and 3.5 hours. These are national-level tasks no matter what you call the contest.

I think Karl and Pepe may have pulled the wrong set of rules from the file cabinet, and got the Nationals set by mistake!  There is actually a rule (10.3.1.5) that limits the maximum cumulative flying time on two consecutive days to 10 hours, and I suspect we are very close to that when yesterday and today are considered.  My flight time today was 2 minutes shy of 6 hours, and my flight time yesterday was 9 minutes shy of 5 hours.  By my calculation, my total flight time for the two days is 11 minutes shy of 13 hours!  After this, Minden, Montague, and Midlothian should be a walk in the park ;-).

Today’s national-level task was a 4 hour ‘long MAT’ with 7 mandatory turnpoints. The task was arranged so after a short (about 40 miles) ridge run down Tussey, all contestants had to work their way upwind over the plateau (twice!) and then downwind 50-75 miles to 16 Turnpike Tunnels and then again to 01 Honey Grove, before working their way upwind again to get home.  Many pilots elected to land at Mifflin on the second downwind leg (to Honey Grove) and accept an under-time finish rather than commit to the additional 50 mile plus round-trip to Honey Grove and back.  For those pilots who did make it all the way around the mandatory portion of the task, the reward was to beat yourself up on Jacks mountain for another 80 miles trying to increase your task speed – fun fun fun!

To make things LOTS more interesting, the soaring conditions started early, but then OD’d badly within an hour or so of the start.  The combination of OD and high winds from the WSW (about 25kt from 280-300 deg) made for low BS ratios and some long, slow slogs.  This made for some ‘interesting’ moments as everyone tried to get onto the plateau at 32 Strip Mine (totally unlandable terrain, by the way) and get out again without scraping too many trees.

On the plus side, today was extremely interesting and challenging, and I kind of enjoyed having my soaring skills and mental  toughness stretched to the utmost.  There were many times today when I was ready to give up on myself and the flight, and I’m quite proud of the fact that I managed to find a way each time to overcome the obstacle and get moving again.  In a way, you really can’t buy training like this, but I worry that the Mifflin regional might acquire even more of a hard-core reputation than it has already.

The popular weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for scattered showers and T-storms, with 50% chance of precip, and XCSkies is calling for a very short day as well.  It’s possible that today was the last contest day, and with 13 hours of flying in the last two days, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing ;-).  Stay tuned!

Frank (TA)

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