99 Soaring Fans, This is Bravo Zulu 7 September 2012 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were flying days. So the camp was completed as planned. Cloudy mornings preceded clearing to partly cloudy by 1300. Wednesday and Thursday could be characterized as challenging since the ceilings were below 4000 feet MSL and the thermals were generally light. …
Tag Archive for sailplane racing
Chilhowee Cross Country and Team Flying Training Camp
by Bill Elliott •
99 Soaring Fans, This is Bravo Zulu I am reporting from Chilhowee Glider Port, home of Chilhowee Soaring Association, http://chilhowee.com/ Like others, I too doubted that the weather would hold good enough for a contest this past weekend, but I arrived Friday afternoon to prepare for the Region V contest and planned to stay over for…
Delorme InReach Tracker: 2-minute tracking, GPS altitude.
by Bill Elliott •
The ‘AvWeb’ emag recently posted an article from Oshkosh in which they mentioned that Delorme had demoed a new firmware upgrade to their InReach satellite tracker (similar to SPOT’s tracker, but it uses the truly world-wide Iridium constellation instead of Globalstar) that supports position reporting intervals as low as 2 minutes. This would be really good…
Region 6 South At Caesar Creek
by Bill Elliott •
Thunder and lightning started the day very early. It also rained quite hard for about an hour, just after dawn. The sun followed the clouds and as good soaring pilots, we all came out of our nighttime hiding places and began assembling gliders. The 10:00 pilot’s meeting provided the essential information for the day’s task and…
April 21 at Perry – The Nugget’s Contest Report for Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
This is my second contest and both were nothing short of OUTSTANDING. It is easy to see why Perry is such a favorite among so many pilots. One gent, Pete Alexander, came from California. There was a strong contingent of our friends from north of the border, representing Ontario Canada. There were 89 registered for 65 slots. Rhonda and Al Tyler were great hosts and let no effort get in their way to provide a fantastic soaring event.
April 20 at Perry – A Nugget’s View of the Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
Well friends, another no fly but we did get to assemble and grid our gliders. By noon we had all 65 sailplanes on the west end of the runway ready to go. Anticipating a less than booming day, all of the tasks were shorter than normal . After about 2 hrs, our CD, Ray Galloway called…
April 19 at Perry – A Nugget’s View of the Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
Robin Clark caught Frank with his signature smile a few days ago in front of the now famous “Micro-castle”. First, I need to let everyone know that our friend Frank Paynter had to leave the contest this morning. I went to the cook shack this morning to begin my morning routine. On arrival, I saw…
April 18 at Perry – A Nugget’s View of the Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
I think you all know by now that we did not fly today at Perry. We woke up to low clouds and it got worse later. Weather aside, we had the pilots’ meeting per the schedule and it included a WX brief that confirmed our collective wisdom…. NO flying today. One simple guide for us…
April 17 at Perry – A Nugget’s View of the Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
Day 2 brings a new point of learning for this Nugget. The task was a MAT, a modified area task. Because the weather guy expressed concern that Perry might suffer damaging winds, hail, and other nasty stuff, the CD shortened the day. The sports class was given a MAT that had two turn points specified and a minimum…
April 16 at Perry – A Nugget’s View of the Region 5 North
by Bill Elliott •
Today is the beginning of the Region 5 North contest. There are about 65 gliders launching each of the 6 days. This day, the launch began at 12:30 and all gliders were airborne in just over an hour. The operations officer, Larry Travers says, he wants to launch one per minute. I thought they did…
