Lumby Air Races

Sorry for not keeping up to date. I'll try to keep on top of the rest of the events for this summer. The spring has had plenty of rain but the good days have been very good.

The Lumby air races started off sitting on launch all day with out getting in a task.

Day two was much better. Good lift forecast, light winds and a 10,000' cloud base later in the after noon. Winds were light and we had strong lift but it was disorganized and you had to search for it every few hundred feet.

I start off typical for me at coopers, I never got over launch and headed down the ridge low. 400' below launch I finally found broken lift and started working my way up. Once I got to the top of the lift at 5000' several pilots raced towards me and we headed off on the task. Three small laps around Lumby followed by three bigger laps for a total task of 98km. I started out following Jeff Shapiro but soon let him go. He was pushing hard and I just wasn't up to the challenge. I lead Ross Hunter, John Orders, and John Mclintock around for a couple laps before I really lost my drive and just started flying with them. John Orders pushed out in front of us as we started the big lap and John Mclintock took a left as he still had a small lap to do. Jeff had lapped us once by this point. Ross and I caught up to John at the satellite turn point much higher than he was. Ross and I managed to get to 6000' before heading off to camels hump. John never found the lift we did and headed out lower. This turned out to be his death and he landed before getting to the turn point. Ross and I got over the turn point at Camels and worked with a couple paragliders to get back up to 6000' before heading back to launch. We topped up in the reliable lift over saddle that had been there all day. I should have notice not many pilots were in the air and several were just heading in to land. We rounded the turn point over launch and the ridge that had been working all day was now shutting down. This was the end of my flight as I gave up and went out to land. Ross worked a little harder and made it a few more km than I did. John Mclintock managed to get around after us and was the only one to make goal. Jeff Shapiro push too hard and ended up landing just a bit short of goal but was way ahead of every one.

Turned out to be a challanging fun day. With the low top of lift it was good for the crowd at lumby days as you could see lots of pilots all day racing around town. Many people in town were commenting about it. The town is very supportive of the event and is very welcoming. I love coming here when the weather works for us.

Today was blown out. A few flew and said it was unpleasant. Looking forward to some good flying and weather ahead of us.