12 August 2011

Contest Day 6 - JS


The task was shortened to 2:30 hrs with the same turn areas because the day developed slower than expected. Dave and I had planned to start at 2:30 but by that time we weren't getting anywhere near the 5000 ft start gate top. We delayed our start to shortly before 3p which in hindsight was a good decision. On task conditions improved and eventually were quite good. Bute we also noticed the cu shooting up and starting to tower. The center of the second turn area was already in rain when we got there around 5p. Fortunately, with a 50k turn area we had lots of options.

I turned home when I had 32 mins left and my computer said it would take me 42 minutes to cover the roughly 100 km. I started out about 2500 ft below glide path and a speed ring setting of 4 kts. As it turned out, running cloud streets, I managed to get up to final glide altitude just running cloud streets and arrived one minute under time (what a waste). My speed on the final leg was close to 200 kps which helped for the overall task speed of 119 kph, covering nearly 300 km in under two and a half hours. It was a short but intense race.




As soon as we were on the ground towering cu started to build but they rained out and collapsed before t-storms could develop.

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