Today, we had a second attempt at Day 1, this time with much more success. The task for the Club class was a two and a half hour assigned area task (also known in US and Canada as TAT). The weather was actually pretty close to the forecast and most pilots in all three classes managed to finish their tasks.
The conditions around the airfield were nice, with 2/8 Cu's with a 2000 meter cloud base, and even some thermal waves, or maybe the waves were produced by the low ridges to the east. Regardless, the flying was way more enjoyable than yesterday. However, the Cu's ended right at the start line, and the whole task of the Club class was flown in dry thermals. The wind from the Southwest, initially around 30 km/h, died down towards the end of the day, but the thermals stayed broken up and quite disorganized.
I started the task at 15:32, probably some 20 minutes later than the optimum start time. Gugui (JB) and Navarro (YY) started around 15 minutes before me. The flying went the usual way the blue days in a competition, with a lot of gaggle flying and trying not to get low, which I managed. However, at the first turn point I found myself all alone. Following Mario's advice (Mario is a pilot from the local Otto Ballod club in Chaves) I went all the way to the end of the TP sector, thinking that the gaggle I was with was following. However, when I made the turn I realized that the rest of the pack cut it short, and were too far to be seen. So, I decided to backtrack a little to the place of the last good climb and was rewarded by the best thermal of the day, around 3.7 m/s average. The only other glider that joined me was Sorin, my neighbor from the parking area, who came about 400 m below and found "only" about 2.5 m/s, but still better than the day's average of 1.5 m/s.
From there on, I bumped into a group of Standard class gliders and managed to hang on with them for a couple of thermals. I cut short the last sector and had to take a couple of relatively weak and bumpy thermals for the final glide. At the end, my speed of 81.8 km/h was good enough for 8th place in the daily score sheet. Navarro came in 4th and Gugui 10th, so we were all quite pleased with the results.
In the evening Batata (Joao), Claude and I went to Chaves for coffee, tea and some reminiscing about old flying days. There we bumped into Matheus (the young Brazilian pilot flying in the World class) who came in 3rd today, his girlfriend Ana and crewman Leo, and we all had ice-cream (mine was milk free).
I apologize for being brief and for not posting any photos, I will try to add them to today's and yesterday's posts later. It is 11:30 and I need to go to sleep.
The photos are below:
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| Kilo-Yankee on the grid with the "Laguna de Otto Balod" in the background |
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| Another shot of Kilo Yankee on the grid |
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| The South African team enjoying quiet time in the shade |
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| Enjoying the view above the cloud base thanks to a bit of wave activity |
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| The start line was at the edge of the cloud field |
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| On a final glide to Chaves |
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| Marcel, the Brazilian team captain, posing in his Serbian Gliding Team t-shirt (and pointing to the Brazilian flag) |
A great start to the competition. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteThanks, that's my plan...
DeleteBravo Dugacki! Evo cekam da vidim rezultate 2 dana ali nikako. Vidim da je world klasa imala dosta slab prosek pa pretpostavljam da je bilo kilavo. Samo napred kako ti znas!
ReplyDeleteZoki
Zoki dobra pretpostavka, mucili se oni i nitko stigo kuci, zato tako kasno rezultati. Ali rezultati kazu sve. Bravo Branko odlicno! Nisi dzabe motao suvarak po Vojvodini.
DeleteZoki good assumption, they are tortured and nobody got home, that's why so late results. But the results say it all. Bravo Branko-awesome! You're not vain circling dry thermals in Vojvodina :-)