Day 9 - Rest Day

After the mass landout yesterday and another rainy forecast for today, the organizers sent out an SMS last night to advise the teams that today would be a rest day.

It felt nice to be able to sleep in until 9 am this morning and re-charge the sleep deficit.  Even Virginia fell asleep last night before dinner and slept for an hour, and that's unusual for her.

I looked at some flight traces this morning to see how some of the pilots in my class were able to get past the storm.  The first thing I saw was that most of them were 15 minutes behind me when they arrived at my decision point to return, so perhaps there was more sun on the ground at that time that encouraged them to push forward.  Their path took them 25 km south of the turnpoint (likely into the sun) and then they had to turn back north towards the turnpoint for a 50 km deviation.  They also ended up about 1500 AGL and climbing in less than 1 kt thermals to sustain.

Two pilots that were with me when I turned ended up landing in a field 10 km further along course, so the chances are, I would have been with them had I kept going.

Many of the pilots are flying motor gliders and like Jerzy, many of them ran out of fuel before they were able to get back to Leszno.  So the engine, shortened their retrieve, but in this case did not prevent it.  I suspect, that it also allowed them to make the decision to push further towards the turnpoint with the thought that they could then motor home.