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

Today I think that I actually learned something. I was despairing
of my apparent inability to improve my behavior in flight, but today's lesson I
think is going to stick with me.

The forecast was for a great day going to the south east. We would get high. We
would have cu's. We would have a nice tail wind. We would go and get to the
convergence and the sea breeze on the second leg. We would make it around the
Salisbury air space (I encouraged people to download the .faf file). This is why
we come here.

Again the open pilots waited until about a half hour before the first start time
and I got towed up after a few sport class pilots with Bruce and Greg behind me.
Jim Prahl took me three kilometers to the west to a nice cu with a pilot
circling under it. I climbed up to 4,700' in 200 fpm as the other pilot (Rick, a
wind dummy) went back east to the air field.

I was happy by myself and drifting just right to make the start cylinder for the
first start time. What I don't know at this point is that John, Greg, and Bruce
are all together 3 kilometers to my east, smack over the middle of the start
cylinder, drifting east and soon taking the first start clock also. They will
get a much better climb than I in the first thermal and get ahead of me. I won't
see them at all.

Unlike when we launched there were no cu's down the course line. The sky was
full of them there just before we launched. After we left the start cylinder the
sky was blue ahead. Fortunately there were haze domes and bits of cu's popping
up every now and then.

I found a thermal next to a landing sport class pilot (we had encouraged them to
get out in front early to be able to hook up with open class pilots who would
start later) and was joined after a while by Felix and Jim Messina. I left them
and headed for Bridgeville where there were cu's forming.

The cu's were working great. I was alone again and there was a line of cu's
right to the turnpoint which was also the sport class goal. The cu's stopped
there. Now the drama began. I made the turnpoint at 5,000' and then headed for
the next turnpoint but it displayed as Laurel not Liberty. I had just missed the
turnpoint name when entering it in the 6030 not noticing that I had the wrong
one in the task. But when the 6030 said 10 km not 36 km for the distance to the
next waypoint I knew what was wrong.

No problem. I'll just push the Go to button and page through all the nearest
points (about eight pages) until I find Liberty and do a Go to there. That was
easy. The problem (and the lesson): I didn't cancel the Route. Now the conflicts
in the instrument began and they sure caused conflicts in my mind.

It was blue out ahead but I could see haze domes to the right of the course line
(kind of toward Laurel but not toward Liberty. While others headed down the
correct course line I was getting more and more confused as I circling in lift
and wondered why I was so far off the course line. And what was the 6030 telling
me?

When the 6030 beeped with the sound of making Laurel and switching to goal at
Snow I realized that my Go to wasn't working. I put Liberty in again and headed
in that direction (I thought, but more likely toward Snow).

I attempted to recover as I was now west of highway 13, eleven kilometers west
of the course line (I would add 22 kilometers to my task). I headed south
southeast going toward Liberty, I thought. I still had to work the blue sky.

Circling at 3,300' in 66 fpm I finally realized that the population ahead was
Salisbury and after zooming out I saw that I was over their airspace, although I
thought I was in their airspace. I had forgotten that it was class D up to
2,500'. Thinking that things were over I headed east to get out of the air space
and to go toward the turnpoint. Might as well finish the task.

Then the 6030 flashed a message that I was about to go into airspace as I lost
altitude. Now I really was going to go into airspace when earlier I had had a
chance to actually not get into it by going north instead of east. The cascade
continued.

I climbed back up out of airspace and headed east to get outside the airspace
boundary and then headed southeast toward the turnpoint.

I could see the convergence line ahead with lower clouds on the eastern side and
nice cu's with lift on the western side. Six kilometers northwest of the
turnpoint I saw a glider heading west and come in under me. It didn't register
that he had just made the turnpoint and was coming back to get on the good side
of the sea breeze to climb up and make it to goal.

I kept heading south toward what the 6030 was telling me was the turnpoint now 5
km's away. But it was really pointing toward goal but giving me the distance to
Liberty. I pushed ahead in the convergence turbulence as the sea breeze came
inland further. As I looked at the 6030 I noticed something strange, the
distance to the turnpoint was getting greater. OMG.

I finally cancelled the Route and saw that I was now 5 km past the turnpoint. I
turned around and glided toward it no longer concerned about making goal (as my
score would be stopped where I entered air space, any way) made the turnpoint
then glided down the road toward the goal.

You can see from the results that other pilots hung together and actually flew
the course line.

Many of the sport class pilots made goal, the longest called sport task here and
certainly longer than any one that we had called earlier in the week. Richard
Milla continued after the turnpoint where he was quite high (and came in second
for the day) and completed a 71 kilometer task, 15.6 km short of Liberty (he had
put the open class task in his instrument).