A beautiful day a long ways away from the rain that came later to
Quest Air

The sport class pilots on the task committee called a task that
was an extension of the first and second day's task using a 3 km cylinder around
Gross with a 20 kilometer leg to Inverness to the northwest. The last leg would
take us over wild country, swamps, river and forest. I thought that this should
prove interesting for sport class pilots.

My team was scheduled to launch first at 1 PM. The sky was full of cu's and had
been since early morning. The wind was actually out of the southeast so I saw no
reason not to get going right away. I was the first pilot to launch at 12:58 PM
hoping to help out my team by stating where the lift was.

I was pulled almost 4 km to the southeast to get me on the upwind side of a
large black cu. There was no lift all the way out and I just felt a little bit
as I released and went to the edge of the cu. There was lift there and I climbed
to cloud base, 3,600' at 200 fpm. I called out my location and my climb rates,
and continued to do so for the next hour and a half.

Pilots were pulled up after me, including Larry Bunner. They all landed fairly
quickly as I went upwind further southeast to get under forming clouds. Pilots
kept being pulled up and landing. Finally a few began to stick including Larry
again and Greg Dinauer and a few of the sport class guys.

All my team had to go to the back of the line and things were slow down below.
It was an hour and forty minutes of circling near the field before I had one
team mate, Matt Christensen, that I could help make it to goal. We left together
at 4,000'.

There were plenty of pilots out on the course before us as we were near the end
of the leaving pilots, but we didn't see too many. The rest of the team was
behind us.

I raced ahead to spot better lift for Matt telling him to take the weaker lift
that I left behind to stay high. I got down to 1,500' but found 150 fpm and
called out my position. Soon a pilot that I thought was Matt came in under me
but wasn't climbing. As I got above 3,000' I saw Tom Lanning just above me and
then another pilot came in to join us just below me.

Well it turned out that this pilot was Matt and I was just waiting around for
the pilot way down below who I thought was Matt. When he asked if we should go
after Tom left (and we hadn't really been gaining much as I was just waiting
around) I finally realized who was who and off we went.

There were plenty of cu's lined up going toward our turnpoint to the west. Tom
was hanging around going slow to see if he could pick up a pilot to mentor. The
one he tried to drag up a few times refused to climb with him, so Tom was on his
own.

I raced ahead to spot the lift and got down to 1,500' again over a pond but
under a black cloud and found 300 fpm. I radioed to Matt and he was soon a
couple of hundred feet below me.

I had to leave to escape the cloud suck and went ahead toward the turnpoint and
a cloud about a kilometer to the north of it. Matt could easily follow me and
see if he needed to go with me or shade a little to the north to the next set of
clouds. I went under the dark cloud but didn't find any lift. Tom was just to
the north.

Not finding lift meant I had to head toward some cu's further away and over
unfriendly territory. I could see Tom about 1,000' above me and watched to see
if he was getting anything. Matt was behind but high and I told him to stay high
under the clouds to the north.

Down again to 1,500' over the river I came in under Tom as he turned over a
small patch of sunlight on a open forest plantation. There was a bit of lift
coming off it and I stuck with it at 123 fpm. Matt stayed high and kept going.
Tom was high enough to continue even though he didn't find any great lift in the
next clouds.

Getting to 3,200' I moved to way, way left of the course line to get over open
fields and under better looking clouds. Over the highway I spotted a bird
further west climbing very fast. I was just a few seconds and I was in the good
lift, which provided plenty to get the last 11 km into goal.

Greg, Larry, Tom, Matt, Cory, and Jim had made it in already. A few landed
nearby. Others came in later.

Day score:
http://soaringspot.com/gss2015/results/club/daily/day3.html

Cumulative:
http://soaringspot.com/gss2015/results/club/total/day3.html

Blog and Live Tracking:
https://airtribune.com/2015-green-swamp-sport-klassic/blog__day_3

https://airtribune.com/play/505/2d

Looks like Matt won the day.