The line up on the final day.
Our meet director doing some cart repairs.
They finally call a task short enough for me to make it in. The preference is to call a closed task on the final day to have every one back early enough to do the scoring and have the wind up party. Conditions are not conducive for a closed task so they call a relatively short task with a quartering tail wind. I take an early tow and conditions are very weak. I’m at the bottom of a death gaggle trying hard to stay off the ground. As I search for better lift I just get lower and lower. Instead of working to get up I decide to land and take another tow. Scott is struggling with me and makes the same choice.
This time I get towed to some decent lift. I climb with several other pilots and get into a good position for the second start. The day has turned on and we head off on course. I was one of the higher pilots when we went on glide and I get a great line. I lose very little height on my first glide and I able to see what every one else is doing. I find a slow climb north of the course line and keep my eye on what every one else is doing. When I see a group find the best lift I join them and arrive near the top of the stack. When the lift stops we head out again. I am leading out and not on the top of the pile any more. We go on a very long glide towards a couple pilots very low. Just before we get to them we hit some lift. The pilot to my right banks up left which I don’t think he should be doing as the pilots in front of us are turning right. As we are not really in the same thermal I turn left with him. As the rest of the gaggle joins us it turns into a real mess. We don’t have one good core and people are turning in both directions. I’m trying to stay off the ground and not hit any one.
I finally get up and press on with Linda, Sonny and a few others. I’m still not very confident about the day and fly very slow. I waste a lot of time trying to suck every foot out of every thermal. It’s one thing to be cautious but we were just wasting time. I start to shade further to the south as there are mountains south of the course line. Sonny is south of me so to keep spread out I don’t get as close to them as I wanted. I lost sight of Sonny but spotted some one climbing over the mountains so I made a right hand turn and head south. I can’t spot the pilot I saw climbing but hit a good climb once I get over the range. As I’m climbing fast I watch as my numbers go positive. I’m not sure if the altitude is set properly. I need to start checking this when I program in my route. I’m 25km from goal and have goal by a couple hundred meters. As the thermal starts to slow I head for home. I have a feeling I’m going to get a good glide in but my numbers are up and down. I can see the airport which is goal and it looks like I’m going to make it. It’s hard to be confident on a 25km final glide thou. I see Linda and another T2 climbing 15km from goal. I stop 500’ over there head’s and take some extra altitude. It’s not a great climb but I stick with it until I have 300m over goal (1000’). I leave every one behind and head on final. I do end up getting a good glide and arrive with 300m to spare. Their was a big crowd on the ground at goal. I was surprised that we used this airport as goal. It was huge and busy. We were given very specific directions on where to fly when we arrived at goal. It was very cool to fly into such a big airport. I set up a good approach into a strong wind. As I transitioned to my down tubes when I got into ground effect I let my nose out and popped up 20’ and stalled. I pounded in hard. I didn’t hurt myself or break anything thankfully. About half dozen pilots came into goal behind me.
I was happy to make goal and was happy with my over all flying. I recognized areas I could have improved on to make it in faster. I think I could have skipped my last climb and still made it into goal. I had wasted so much time earlier that I didn’t think it was worth pushing hard to end up low 1 or 2 km out struggling to get in. I’m very happy with my comp here and I hope I can build on what I learned this week.
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