January 8, 2013 - Day 2

Just a brief note for now since I've got to rig the glider this morning. We had a 248 km racing task yesterday in difficult condition with broken up blue thermals and moderate wind. Nobody made it home, although most of us landed within the 20 km of the finish line. I was some 3.5 km short and it appears that the effort was good enough for the 1st place for the day.

Crowded bumpy thermals all day long...

Kilo-Yankee in the stubble field.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that there is on-line real time tracking for a few gliders in each class. I carried the tracking gear on Day 2 and will probably be carrying it on Day 3.

You can use the following links, at least one of them should work.
http://www.wgc2012.com.ar/novedades.php?uno=54

http://bit.ly/115UuxV

Here's an update on Day 2 task and how it unfolded. You can see the flight trace in the picture below.

My flight trace on Day 2

I started the task at 14:55 with a number of other pilots. My progress towards the first turn point was very slow. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to cover 94 km, flying against a 30 km/h head wind with the average climb rate of 1.3 m/s. Constant gaggle flying made things worse, having to be extremely alert in order to avoid any close encounters in the bumpy thermals.

While in cruise the Sun was beating down into my face and the temperature in the cockpit must have been in the 40's. Unfortunately, the ventilation in Kilo-Yankee is very poor due to the tow hook being installed in the nose (normally on a Std. Cirrus it's below the cockpit just ahead of the main wheel), blocking about 80% of the ventilation air flow into the cockpit. The only way to get some air in was to open the little scoop on the canopy window, which do in the thermal, but I usually keep it closed in cruise to minimize the drag.

Probably because of the heat and constant gaggle flying, I noticed that my flying wasn't as smooth and my decision making wasn't as good I usual. Also, for some reason my group managed find only broken up thermals and lost about 15 to 20 minutes compared to the group ahead of us.

About 20 km before the first TP we finally found a relatively good thermal and I managed to climb up to 1750 meters, which was the highest point of the flight. I was the first one to leave the thermal and went straight for the TP. Just before the TP I encountered some sink and after rounding the TP, I saw the rest of my group coming in about 150 meters higher, as they must have avoided the sink. In a way this was helpful because I then took a slight detour south of the course line into the area from which the rest of the group came to the TP. This turned out to be a good decision and I found another 1.7 m/s thermal that took me back up to 1650 meters. To make things better, the rest of the group continued straight on the course to the 2nd TP, so I finally had a luxury of having a good thermal jut to myself!

The second leg of the task proved to be the easiest, thanks to the tail wind, the Sun at my tail and not-too-bad lift. This only lasted for about half an hour, but was a welcome break.

After rounding the 2nd TP, the things got worse, much worse, due to the very wet terrain in that area. All of a sudden, I found myself low and in a big gaggle endlessly moving from one weak bumpy thermal to the next on which would usually be the same or worse. Luckily, we were drifting downwind.

Just before the 3rd TP, as I was circling in a week thermal, I noticed that the wind has suddenly changed direction and became mainly Southerly, meaning that we would have a head wind on the last leg. Some days you just don't get many breaks. Having made a couple of tries outside of the gaggle, I was now among the gliders at the bottom of the gaggle, and this was probably the low point of the task in every regard. Since the wind started pushing us North, away from the TP, the gliders above me started leaving. I decided to stay for a couple of more circles because being alone in the thermal enabled me to improve my rate of climb. After two or three more circles I noticed a group of 4 Ximangos (a small bird of prey) circling at my altitude a few hundred meters North. Of course, I joined them and to my delight found a solid 1 m/s that took me to 900 m. As the Ximangos went South, I followed them and they soon located another 1 m/s thermal that I rode to 1100 m.

From there I passed through the TP sector and set off into the quartering headwind towards Chaves. I decided to veer a little bit to the West (the upwind side). Along the way I managed to find a few more 0.5 to 1 m/s thermals and, to my surprise, I found a lot of lift and reduced sink in cruise. At one point, I made a 10 km glide into the 20 km/h headwind at a 103 glide ratio! I guessed (correctly) that I managed to stumble upon a convergence line that just may be enough to carry me back across the finish line. However, as I turned towards the airfield, the convergence line disappeared and the lift turned into sink. As I called in the "Operaciones" on 123.0 (the official frequency) announcing the 10 km distance to the finish line, I added that I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. Two minutes later, I called again and told them that I was going to lend out, to which Enrique, the director of operations, replied "OK, good luck Branko." I could choose between several stubble fields and I decided to land in the one where I saw that someone had already landed. Being competitive, I landed on the other side of the field, the one a little closer to the finish line. It turned out that the other guy in the same field was Sean Franke from the US team, who's ASW-20 has a 8% handicap compared to my Std. Cirrus.

The retrieve went smoothly, all the way to the entrance to the airfield, at which point we were told to back up and go to a different gate. In the confusion about which gate and which way to turn, Luis ended up backing up the trailer onto a busy highway, which was unsafe and unnecessary. When I complained the next day, I got an apology from the organizers. It turns out that they decided not to allow the trailers through the main gate because the tail on some of the trailers was hitting the Welcome sign.

I was quite surprised to learn that no one from the Club class made it back, given that a lot of them were about half an hour ahead of me at the first TP. I was also surprised when it turned out that I got the 1st place for the day, given that things didn't go very well for the most part of the difficult flight, but it looks like the others had an equally difficult time.

One downside to my first daily win in the World's was that I found it quite difficult to fall asleep that night, even after downing half a big bottle of the local dark beer.

A few more photos from this day are below:

Kilo-Yankee on the grid with a temporary lake in the background

Flying over those who had already landed out

At 200 meters above the terrain, but too far to make the finish line

A group of Ximangos in the soy field next to my outlanding field

Walking to the main road to meet Luis