Dave's Day 4

Today was another interesting weather day.  We again had a 2 hr area task because the forecast was that we would again have a lot of cloud and some isolated showers in the area around 4 pm.  Today, that forecast was correct.  At this morning's meeting, the weather man apologized for the forecasting error yesterday and told us that he hopes his forecast today is correct.  The satellite image below shows the cloud cover at 1645 local time proving that the weather forecast was correct.  The yellow square in the image is Leszno and you can see there really was a lot of cloud.

The next pictures were taken at our B&B around the same time and show the full overcast and no cu.

In this last picture, the view is towards the SE where our last turnpoint was located and you can just see the last bits of blue sky.

In general, the day was quite good for the short 2 hr task period and I had a couple of really good climbs, with the best climb at 6.1 kts.  Unfortunately, on the way home as things were starting to get dark and rain showers were popping up, I took a couple of very weak climbs with the gaggle that cost me a good 5 minutes.  At one point, I finally had enough and moved forward to find a "good" 2.5 kt climb - this in comparison to the less than 1 kt in which the gaggle was climbing.

The finish gate today was a 10 km circle around the airport at 1000 ft AGL and for most of the glide home, I didn't believe the final glide calculator, it showed I needed too much height.  I then realized I had the Mc ring set to 4 kts and dialed that back, and then finally (too late) it occurred to me that I did not select the navigate to the edge of the ring option, so it was calculating arrival at 1000 ft over the airport, plus my safety factor.  So today, stupid mistakes cost me.

The goal tomorrow - no stupid mistakes (and no weak thermals and less deviations)!