Dave's Days 2 and 3

 Day 2

I didn't have much time last night to write about yesterday's flight, but the big problem we had was cirrus shutting down large areas of the sky.  A thick band had passed through and was moving east towards our third turnpoint and I had 1:30 hrs left to cover 200 km, so I decided to turn for the third leg.  In hindsight, this was a poor tactical decision as part way along the third leg, I caught up to the shade from the cirrus and from there it was a smooth glide for another 20 km until I landed out.  I think those who managed longer distances, flew further into the second cylinder allowing them to connect with a few cu to the north and this also allowed the cirrus to move further away from the third turn.  In the 15m class only two made it home out of 49.

Day 3

Today was another tough day, and once again, the 15m class had the worst of it.  The 18 m guys had one turnpoint in the low weak stuff to the west, while the 15 m had the first two turnpoints in the bad stuff and Jerzy thinks that 100 km/hr was slow!  As you can see from my baragraph trace, we were not that high for most of those two legs, in general working around 2000 AGL and less than 1 kt average climbs.  For most of the time on the second leg I was with a large gaggle of gliders, there were probably 20-30 of us struggling to stay airborne.

When we finally got back to the east, a little north of Szeged, things got better again and we were able to climb back up to 4000 in 3-4 kt thermals.  After this point it was a pretty straight forward glide under some large streets.  As you can see from the route below, my last climb was just before the third turn area and then it was pretty much a clear run home climbing under the streets with no need to circle.