Morning 6 Aug - Contest Day 2

Outside the hotel, the sky is blue; after the 10:15 am pilot's meeting, the sky to the north is dotted with low Cu.

Sergei Morozov leaves today for Canada...  Sergei's ASG-29 is leased to the Russian team, and MSI (there was already an MS on the list), with Dmitry Timoshenko came third yesterday in 18m.  OX, Willem's Antares, is also flying, as is A1, Ed's LS-10.  Lots of Canadian content.

Yesterday, 70% of 15m finished the task (got speed points), 90% of 18m, and 35% of Open.  The sea breeze front was enhanced by a wave, and it arrived into the southern task area 3 hours ahead of expectation.  Just over 25% of the gliders landed out.

On arrival at Uvalde, the winds were just off the runway heading, 18 knots gusting to 23 knots.  This exceeded the structural limitations of Canada Base Tent, sadly, and it will require a healthy dose of "the universal adapter" - duct tape - in order to function today.  Another gust front should arrive about 5:30 pm, just before the pilots return.

In anticipation, the fleets are being sent more northerly, where the effect of sea breeze will be less.

15m (Nick, ST), 549 km racing task.  This one's going to be tricky, far into the hills, but the lift there is very good, and far from the sea breeze.
18m (Dave, F1, and Jerzy, XG), 579 km racing task (biased north as well)
Open (no Canadians) 626 km racing task.

Pictures of the tasks are on the Way Aero website at:  http://tracking.way.aero/wgc2012/; this is also where the trackers are displayed.  You can also see them pictorially on the results tab on the http://wgc2012uvalde.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110&Itemid=7 page; results show up above the map after the scorers work their magic.

They expect 8,500' cloudbases today, with thermals at trigger of 89F/31.5C at 1230, initial climbs to cloudbase (minus 500) at 4300'

High today, 4-6 pm, a mild 99F.  Forecast high tomorrow - mid hundreds.

The OSTIV congress begins today.  OSTIV is the Technical and Scientific side of our sport.  The motto "Safety First - then Performance" says it all.  OSTIV has three panels; sailplane development (primarily having to do with safety - for example, the development of safety cockpits on modern gliders to protect the pilot if there is a crash), and making things stronger and lighter; Training and Flight Safety (pretty well what it sounds like), and Meterology (self-evident).  Organisation Scientifique et Technique du Vol à Voile (OSTIV) is a body associated with the FAI Gliding Commission (IGC). The FAI IGC oversees the sport of gliding worldwide and is a department of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).

There is an opening ceremony on Wednesday, three days of papers, then an excursion for the scientists worldwide who gather during WGCs to advance our sport.

Grid is 1215, and 1st launch, about an hour from now.

Tomorrow, I am baking on the grid with Jerzy, as Maria is taking airborne pictures of the grid, so morning reporting will be somewhat late.  Soaring Cafe has a number of blogs from teams of the world, which make interesting reading; not as interesting as this, but really close in some cases!

Dan