Dave's Training Day 1

Today we had a 500 km task for practice and I flew it in 4.3 hrs at 115 km/hr.  The route and barograph traces are shown below

The lift was quite good at times and I averaged 4.3 kt over the task.  My best climbs were over 7 kts and I also had to take some weak thermals in places to keep moving forward without dropping too low.  The third leg (that runs from the NE down to the SW near the red restricted airspace crossed two rivers and there were large holes associated with the rivers.

The barograph trace shows the low spots and high spots along the third leg where I was down to 4000 ft, but then had a nice 5.3 kt climb for a 3000 ft gain.

The other thing you will see in the route picture above is the airspace that we have to deal with.  To make things more interesting, some of the zones open and close on a daily, or time basis.  For example, today, where my first leg crosses the control zone NE of Zielona Gora, it was inactive from 1030-1630, so we could fly though it.  So, both the LX and Oudie were going nuts warning me about it and I couldn't dismiss it for the day since the third leg had the chance to get close to it after 1630.

All in all, it was a good first training day and all the instrument and glider systems seemed to work!