Sailplane Racing News

1-26 Championships Day 1

Once again I don’t think anyone was too inspired by the forecast this morning. Weatherman John Lubon said it was going to be blue blue blue, unless a crazy thermal was heated up enough to make it up to the lofty altitude of nearly 7000 feet. So, we all expected solid blue. What most of…

1-26 Championships Practice Day

Leah and I arrived at the beautiful Caesar Creek Soaring Club last night for the 1-26 Championships. For those unfamiliar, the 1-26 Champs are the only outlet in the US for one design sailplane racing, are organized by the 1-26 Association (www.126association.org), and feature competition among only Schweizer 1-26 gliders. With only 23:1 book performance…

Mifflin Day 3 Redux: Too much of a good thing?

Mifflin is internationally famous for its ridge days, and we typically get one ridge day per contest here.  Well, we got one yesterday, but I’m thinking now it was a case of “be careful what you ask for – you might get it”.  I’ve been flying here in contests for over a decade, and yesterday’s…

Mifflin Airport Review – Take II

Today (and quite possibly tomorrow as well) is a rain day here at the Mifflin Region 2 Soaring Contest, so Karl Striedieck was gracious enough to sit with me and go over the many airports/airstrips in the current (2014) database to cull out the bad and verify the good ones.

Mifflin Day 3 – Sometimes the magic doesn’t work

I believe it was in ‘Little Big Man’ where an indian (Native American to be politically correct) Medicine Man decides to end his own life using his special powers.  When he doesn’t die, his comment to Dustin Hoffman was “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t”.  Well, that’s what happened today at Mifflin; CD Pepe…

Mifflin, Day 2 – All the food groups

Today was a classic Mifflin non-ridge day.  A very unstable air mass with a significant cap kept us from getting T-storms, but we had just about everything else – wave, wave suppression, 8-10kt thermals, streets (some even aligned with the wind), blue holes, high overcast, spreadout, rain showers, snow showers, and just about anything else that…

Mifflin Airport Review

I apologize for the lateness of this post – I was tied up with repairing my wing wheel, and replacing leaky air tubing on my glider :-(.  Anyway, here is my (personal, biased, and more than likely insane) take of the airports/airstrips in the Mifflin contest area.  As always, if an airport/airstrip isn’t mentioned, that means…