Today was registration and official practice day. The rest of the pilots from around the world showed up today to get in some practice and do some final tweaking on their gliders.
Joergy from Germany and one winged Armand.
Vicki Cain meet organizer during registration.
Tugs lined up ready to tow pilots up.
I took my time getting out to the air field after registaring for the meet. I got to the airport about 12:00 and slowly set up my glider. After watching a few people tow I got ready to go and got in line. I climbed out with a few other pilots to 1700m and headed west alone. I was trying to stay high. I wanted to get as much air time as I could and not to worried about going very far. I don't think any one else even headed cross country. After getting a little low and taking a very slow climb back to 1400m I was getting low again. I saw a tractor working a field so I turned 90 degrees and headed towards it. I hit some strong lift on the way there and made a couple turns. I was getting tossed around pretty good so I left to continue on to the tractor. I hit huge sink on the way and got drilled most of the way. I arrived at 600m and found nothing when I got there. I landed after 1.5 hours and 21km away from the airport. I sent Armand a text with my coordanates and packed up. One of the Australian pilots was kind enough to come and get me but didn't have his GPS set to the same datum as I did. He was using dd.dddd (degrees decimal degrees) We use dd.mm.mmm (degrees minutes decimal minutes). So after driving around the country side for two hours we got on the same page and they found me. I've learned this leason in the past but some times it take's more than once.
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