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Jul
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Written by:
Jeff O'Brien
7/2/2009 10:45 PM
Weaving baskets
We go to Aspres - therefore I fly with flowers...
They call a 114km task with SIX turnpoints before goal at Ribiers. The light lift before the start creates swarms of gliders. The thickest traffic yet in the meet. I snug up to several pilots. It's amazing no one has mid air collisions with such congestion. You'd think someone would stop paying attention momentarily.
Those impressive peaks behind launch.
I head across the valley for a better start strategy and hang back for the second start. Somehow I find just the lift I need and just get to cloudbase as the start ticks over. Most of the field is off to the east, and I get a wicked run for the first 15 miles.
I'm in the lead, and there's reasonable clouds ahead, so I press on when I get to Laragne. A dozen pilots are turning just behind me. I plummet. I get WAY down in the valley before I'm able to find something to fight in and regain a footing. I've made a costly error. Not going to win a day in the first 20miles. I should have hung back and used other pilots. Lesson learned.
It takes me a long time to work my way back up to the clouds in the next three thermals. I'm angry and determined to regain ground. The climbs over the peaks are working and I'm flying 60+mph between thermals. We hit a couple of VERY strong climbs to cloud base and I run into Jonny 4km before the 4th turnpoint. I'm 8km behind.
A little Ruhmer.
All the clouds are working over the peaks and I'm dolphin flying over 9000ft. Davis gets on the radio to say we've got glide through the last two turnpoints to goal from our height. I press on. There's an unknown pilot in my path and for fun, I skim a meter off his top surface. Speed up so he can't catch me to repay the favor. :)
After the next turnpoint, we run into blue conditions and a 25km headwind. Pilots are plummeting and landing. As I near the last turnpoint, I see a pilot land downwind!!! They do a quarter spin on flare and plop down. It's Shapiro! I didn't know, but he'd landed on a steep slope. Pilots were falling out of the sky in the mountain rotor.
Hmm... insult to injury at the end of our day.
I made two turns over Jeff in lift to make sure he was moving and to ensure I had goal. Flew in and landed in the strong, turbulent conditions. They stopped the task 14 minutes later. With the scoring system, they go 15 minutes back from the stopped time and I missed getting scored in goal by less than a minute. Terrible news for me. I went from 13th to 20something on the day and lost over 200 points. It penalized me HUGE. Pilots were irate as the weather wasn't that bad. A terrible call.
Airtime: 3:40. Flights: 1. Miles:71.
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