38 58 10.92 N,75 52 0.00 W,Highland Aerosports, Ridgely,
Maryland, USA

The sun finally broke through after the 11 AM pilot briefing. We
scheduled a 12:30 re meeting to see if we would fly. The winds were calming down
a bit but as soon as the sun came out it heated up the ground and caused the
development of cumulus clouds from local heating. So the cloud cover was still
quite heavy.

Cloud base was only 2,500' and there wasn't any lift for the wind dummy on his
first two flights. We kept pushing the start window time back. Finally we opened
launch at 3 PM with the first start window at 3:30 PM with five start windows.

As we waited the sky to the west began to open up. Charley Allen (who predicted
the day before that we would start launching at 3 PM today) took off and was
able to stay up, and almost got to cloud base. With the sun now hitting the
ground around us we decided to get going.

I launched after a couple of sport class pilots and found really light lift just
on the upwind side of the clouds that were drifting past and on the downwind
side of the sunny opening in the clouds. It was too light and I went searching
for more.

Down to 1,200' I found 200 fpm right over the air field in a 13 mph northwest
wind and took it to cloud base at 3,200'. Bruce had been dropped off after me
and came over me as I was in the best thermal around and soon we were both just
barely keeping out of the cloud.

The clock ticked over to the second start time at 3:45 with no one else around
and we had a ways to go to get to the edge of the start cylinder but I could see
that we would be drifting outside the cylinder before the next start time given
the wind strength. I decided to go for it and Bruce followed behind. I was
pretty amazed that he went with me. as we started five minutes late.

There were thick clouds ahead, the thinning out that had occurred to our west
hadn't caught up with our course line to the south east. There was a dark cloud
street heading toward the goal we were under it. The first stop was for 55 fpm
back to 2,900'.

The ground was 90% shaded ahead of us as we headed down the the cloud street.
Down to 1,900'  I worked 67 fpm back to 2,300' with Bruce just above me. I
lost track of him at this point.

The cloud street was south of the course line as the sky opened up to the along
the course line. I was still hoping for better lift under the dark clouds. Down
to 1,900' again I work 61 fpm back to 2,600'.

Just northwest of Bridgeville and less than thirty kilometers from goal I got
down to 1,500' and started working good lift that slowly petered out as I
climbed back to 2,100'. Jim Messina had landed below me. I saw Bruce just to my
east along the other edge of the cloud street and headed that way to get in line
upwind of him. I didn't find anything but down to 800' I worked what I could but
it wasn't enough to keep me up over the next set of trees. I landed short.

Greg apparently was over me as I thermalled up over Jim Messina. We were all
four or five kilometers south of the course line under the cloud street.

Bruce was the only pilot to make it into goal.