30 Jul - Dave's Practice Day 3

Today was a great day.  A 4:15 area task was called for 18 m with a nominal distance of 616 km.  The task took us SE for about 150 km, then to the west and back north in to the hill country and finally a leg to the east in the hills before heading home.

The weather guesser suggested we might see some cu, but thought it would be mainly blue.  As it turned out, the sky was full of cu based initially around 7000 and later rising to about 9000.  The lift was as strong as I have ever seen in Uvalde, I had one thermal where the window averager showed 14.5 kts for a couple of turns, and several where I saw 12 and 10.

At one point on the leg north, my task speed was showing 157 km/hr and I was pushing to try and get it over 160 to hit 100 mph :)  But the conditions to the north didn't cooperate as things weakened near the northerly turnpoint and I had to stop pushing.

For the day, I finished with a speed of 149.8 km/hr over 625 km, but came in 5 minutes early, so my scoring speed was reduced to 147 and this was good for fifth on the day.  The loss of almost 3 km/hr for 5 minutes undertime shows how critical it is to meet the minimum time on task.  That's the lesson for today!