Nick, ST, Practice days report

Nick, ST - Practice Day 1, 28 Jul

Technical inspection at 11AM went OK, with no issues, except that I was 10 KG overweight on the scale, and had to dump. I'll need to fill ballast with 10 litres less than calculated. There was still time to get on the grid for a flight. Cloudbase was about 6000' with good cloud coverage, but the lift wasn't all that great.  After the start, I kept going looking for good lift and found myself at 2000' AGL with dying clouds all around. I decided to take a 1.2 kt thermal to get some manoeuvring height. It started to look better ahead, so I moved on and found 5 kts. After I turned the second turn according to the display on my computer, I checked my second computer and it was displaying 0.7 km. I had missed the 0.5 km radius. I turned around, in sink of course, to get get within 0.5 km. It turns out I had not changed the radius for one turnpoint in the task. The cloud streets were not lined up with the course line, so I followed the streets for a while, then crossed over to the next street a few times. At the 4th turn with two more to go, it was decision time. It was mostly blue to the north, cloudbase 7000', with deteriorating conditions, higher ground with few landout options in the "hill country". Keep going or go home? I decided to go home and abort the task. No point in taking chances on a practice day.

Nick, ST - Practice Day 2, 29 Jul

A blue day according to the weatherman, but there were a few CUs at the time of take-off. I found lift to 5500' in the blue, with up to 7500' under the short lived clouds. Before the gate opened, I explored the first leg and found nothing in the blue. I decided to wait for a while to see if CUs would develop.  A few gliders started but still no CUs on the first leg. I decided to get going anyway. I found reasonable lift in the blue and eventually met up with the Belgian 15m team that happens to be sharing our team frequency. I flew with them 3/4 of the task. Halfway on the second leg CUs were forming and with good lift, sometimes up to 8 kts average. The second turn was in the blue just beyond the clouds, and the first half of the third leg was on the edge of the CUs. I lost track of the Belgian team when they found 10 Kts average, and searching below I only found 6 kts. Halfway along the third leg, it was turning blue with just a few wispy CUs. Lift was still good, but I found heavy sink on the way to the third turn and found myself at 4000 MSL. I found 4 kt lift at the turn and decided to take it before moving on. Looking ahead, there were a few small CUs on the last leg. with a tail wind and a line of wisps providing reduced sink and some lift, I slowly got on the final glide path. A fun day overall, but my Flarm antenna, stuck on with double sided tape, fell off. The glue got soft in the heat!

Nick, ST - Practice Day 3, 30 Jul - Time for a rest day and for fixing issues such as figuring a way to keep the Flarm antenna in place.