Day 2

Yesterday was a typical Uvalde day with streets running through most of the task area.  A few of our task legs were not aligned with the streets and required a little bit of hopping from one to another.  I started with the US pack again today, and although I made different decision we met up every time my our streets joined.  A couple of the US guys found a good 8.5 kt climb early on and they were able to leap ahead of the pack and keep ahead.

My speed at 133 km/hr was slow for the day, netting me 13th place on the day.  I was able to put together some nice runs, but I think my thermal average is probably lower than the others.  I need to check that assumption when the flight logs are posted later.

I had a great final glide, starting 90 km out with 20 minutes left in the task.   I was able to cover the distance in 22 minutes at an average speed of 212 km/hr!  That leg helped bump up my task speed by a couple of points.

Dave

Day 2 - a classic Uvalde day

We had a classic Uvalde day today - cloud streets in every direction with bases at 7000ft and 8 - 10 kt thermals. Everyone had great flights.
Jerzy won the day in 18m with a whopping 152.9 kph over 560 km.

15m was the first to launch. Initially it was difficult to keep the heavily loaded gliders airborne in the weak morning thermals. Dave and I started shortly before 2p. By that time cloud base had risen to 6000 ft.

As conditions improved further, I found myself cruising at 100 - 110 kts under cloud streets, occasionally stopping for 8-10 kt thermals. My best climb of the day averaged 9.1 kts bottom to top. It took only three minutes, six seconds to gain 2858 ft. I placed 13th for the day, doing 132.9 kph over 532 km, again ahead of the other standard class ships.

Joerg Stieber - JS

Contest Day 2

Had a good flight on day 1, yesterday. But found myself all alone in the blue. Got low once over ugly terrain and decided to take it a bit slower and stay high. Consolation is that I was faster than the other non-flapped ships in the 15m class, including an LS-8 piloted by Lit Beaudoin, a world class pilot from Belgium. It is interesting to compare speeds across classes. 15m was almost as fast as 18m and both 15/18m outraced Open Class.

For today we decided to change our routine. Sonia and I went out at day break to rig before breakfast. It was a beautiful sunrise.

15m is first to launch today with a 4 hr area task, minimum 344 km, max 625 km. It will be a long day in the heat.

Day 1 Scores

Preliminary scores are posted on the SSA website at:
http://ssa.org/members/contestreports/contestresultsdetail.asp?id=2174&display=results

I think there is a small issue with the scoring program as the distance shown on the score sheet for the 15 m task does not take into account the subtraction of the 5 km start and 3 km finish cylinders, so I expect to see the speeds all drop by about 3 km/hr on the official scores once this is taken into account.  Since everyone will be affected by this change, it won't change the overall results or placings, just slow everyone down.

 

Dave

Day 1

The tasks today were racing (or assigned) task for all classes up to the north into Texas Hill Country.  In the 15 m class we had a 340 km task that I was able to complete in 2:40 at just over 126 km/hr.  I think I heard of some speeds in the 130's in my class.  It was mostly blue today with the lift going to about 4000 AGL at launch time and by start time we were up to a more comfortable 6000 AGL.  On course we were able to get up to about 8000 AGL later in the day. Average lift was lower for me today at 4.8 kts.

I started with a pack of US pilots and was able to pass them about half way around the course.  This meant I was now on my own in the blue.  I was able to stay ahead of some of them, but I think some passed me on the final leg home.  At the point where I passed the group my task speed was 140 km/hr, but after a lowish point around the last turnpoint it dropped back to 112 km/hr.  I  need to look at my trace in more detail to see why it dropped so drastically!

 

Dave