Flying Day 2

The satellite picture still does not look much better, but the system is slowly moving out of the task area and the forecast shows that we should have good conditions for the next 6 days.  If we can fly all of them we will have an 8 day contest.


With about 10 mm of rain over the previous 24 hrs and limited sun on the ground as a result of the high cloud the conditions for today were very challenging. The sniffer reported 3 kts through 3000 agl, so the club class was launched.  By the end of their grid there were many gliders low and 3 landed back for relights as a result of high cloud shutting off the sun near the airport.  After a short delay, the FAI class was launched and the pilots at the front of the grid had a pretty easy time climbing to 5-6000 agl, but the last three were again caught by another large shaded area over the airport and two had to relight.  To ensure a fair start for everyone the gate was held until the relights could climb up.

The club class gate opened at 2:30 pm and they flew a turn area task with only three completions and the rest either landing out or not getting away from the airport,

The FAI class gate opened at 4:00 pm for a 1:30 hr MAT as a result of the changing conditions.  This allowed all but three to complete the task in challenging conditions.  I had a bad day after abandoning a turnpoint after committing about 40 km of distance towards it only to discover that the clouds for the last 20 km were not working, so instead of risking a landout, I had to turn around and make my way home without the added distance, but better to get home with some speed points, than to be in a field with none. (especially with all the water on the ground and the mosquitoes)

 

Dave

Contest Day 3

Today is a rain day, the weather system is spinning cloud and rain into the area from the east. The rain started around 10:30 today and the day was scrubbed at the pilots' meeting.

 

Dave

Flying Day 1

The trough over the prairies is still causing some problems for us, but at least we got in our first flying day today.  The satellite shot shows the clouds that we are still dealing with and our task area is represented by the circle inside the red square.

At the task committee meeting we made up three tasks to cover the NE, NW and a shorter 2 hr task in case we didn't get the temperature needed for thermals until late.  As it turns out, none of the tasks were usable today as the weather changed rapidly and any pre-planned task was not going to work.

Part way through the club class launch, we decided the only option would be a 3 hr MAT with no mandatory turnpoints to allow the pilots to fly to the sun and stay in the lift.  The gates were opened just before 2 pm with cu in the NE sector and overcast in all other sectors.  As it turns out the MAT was the right call today with only four landouts and a few early finishers.

Ground elevation here in North Battleford is 1850 feet and most thermals went to 8000 ASL with a few up to 9000.  The strongest thermals were in the 7-8 knot range and and 5-6 knots was common under the good clouds.

I was able to cover 302 km in 2:56, coming in just under minimum time, but close enough to the full 3 hours.

 

Dave

Day 1 scrubbed

The satellite image shows the picture for today, there was a trough moving through the area with a lot of high cloud that clamped down the thermal activity today.  We waited in the grid from 11:30 to 2:30.  100 kilometers to the west was a good looking field of cu that we hoped would  make its way into our task area, but it stayed just out of reach.  At 2:30 the day was scrubbed and is typically the case the weather suddenly improves, but in this instance not enough to have launched the grid and flown a meaningful task.  We had some nice cu over the airport for about an hour and then the high cloud started to cover up again shutting things down.

The forecast for the next couple of days shows cloudy and rain, but they have been wrong before!

 

Dave

Canadian Nationals - Contest Day 1

An approaching system is threatening to shut us down today, the public forecast has a 60% chance of rain late morning followed by a risk of thunderstorms in the afternoon.  It looks like the worst of it might slide just south and let us get a task in to the north.

Time to go rig!