Day 4 - Dave

Today we had a 503 km assigned task that took us well to the north into no-mans-land.  The first turnpoint is truly in the middle of nowhere!

 

The trace above shows my flight in red and one of the Aussie pilots in blue.  We were together for much of the flight, but in the end he beat me home by 20 minutes and took 3rd on the day.  It came down to one thermal that made the difference.  On the final leg home, just before our paths diverge we were pretty much at the same place and height.  I dveiated west and he deviated east of course.  He did get quite low, about 1300 ft AGL and I took some 2 kt climbs to stay a bit higher, but then he found a 4.5 kt climb that got him to final glide height.  In the baragraph below, you can see where his strong final climb took place just before 1820, while I dribbled along sampling 3 or 4 weak climbs until finally getting something reasonable to get on final glide.  It was disheartening watching my 114 km/hr speed to that point in the task melt away by 10 km/hr as I struggled.

I am happy with the flight, except for that low and slow spot, that knocked me from a top 10 finish today to well down the score sheet.  All it takes is one climb!