Dear Sarah, Congratulations on your win at the Sports Class Nationals! I was especially impressed by the way you kept your game face on and abjured congratulations until it was over. You’ll need that discipline at the Club Class World Championships. By the way, I think that you, Sean, and Ryszard, along with the other…
Tag Archive for 2011 Sports Class Nationals
Day 5 at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
Today’s weather prognositication was for hot (in the high 80’s) and mostly sunny with cloubases in the 4500-5000msl range. Mostly light & variable winds, becoming westerly later in the day. The CD called a 3hr TAT with three turns (north, then south, then north again). By launch time, things were looking pretty good. The sniffer…
Day 4 at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
Its official now – with Day 4 in the bag, we have a non-devalued Sports Class championships – yay! Today promised to be a real scorcher – from a temperature standpoint at least. The high today was in the 80’s, and with no wind to speak of and very high humidity it was more like…
Day 3 at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
Another challenging day today, made more so by a CD with a twisted sense of humor. The weatherman (another guy with a twisted sense of humor) promised us a day with cu’s, no blowups, and light winds. What he forgot to tell us was that we wouldn’t be able to actually climb under any of…
Things you never want to hear at a contest site
by Bill Elliott •
There are some things that you never want to hear at a contest site, independent of the flying itself: “The internet is out” “The phone lines are out” “Water to the field has been cut off ” (and it’s the weekend) “The one shower and one toilet are inoperative due to the water cutoff” “We…
Another no-contest day at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
Today dawned nice and sunny, and I had my glider assembled and out on the grid by 8:30, ready to race. Unfortunately mother nature had other ideas as a cirrus shelf started to make its appearance over the western horizon as the 10:00 morning meeting progressed. By grid time the leading edge of the cirrus…
Day 2 at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
You know that story about how as a teenager your parents seem to be dumb as rocks, but they somehow get a lot smarter as you get older? Well that was the case for the CD’s call today. I’m sitting at the back of the grid cussing out the CD for tasking us in a…
No contest day at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
The day dawned nice and bright (and cold!) this morning, and everything pointed toward a great day. BMapper (Dr. Jack/Kramer) showed 3-5kt to 4-5000msl, light winds, B/S in the 10’s and probably blue with some possibility of clouds later in the day. Last night the temperature got down into the 30’s, and I was happy…
Day 1 at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
Well, we finally got a day in, and it was a good one. The day started out with fog and overcast, but the fog lifted off quickly and by grid time things were looking pretty good. John Good did the sniffing honors and immediately reported the ridge was working (although not spectacularly so), and he…
Rain Day at Chilhowee
by Bill Elliott •
The only thing the weatherman missed in his prediction for today was exactly when the rain would start. When I woke up this morning, there was no rain and there was actually some sun peeking through some medium level cloud cover. That was the good news – the bad news was the windsock was standing…
