The very preliminary results with multiple errors.

The "official" forecast (from Al Giles) was for moderate northeast winds, but the NSW RASP and XCSkies, available to your unofficial weather forecaster, called for south southeast winds, light. This was an issue because it determined which launch will be working, and I'm not interested in going to the north northeast launch.

I'm only looking at the surface winds and winds at 2,000'. Sure enough XCskies and RASP come through again. We set up, for the most part, on the east and southeast launch (that's where all the paragliders were when we got there). A third to half the field set up on the west launch assuming that the thermals in the afternoon would overpower the light easterly winds. I set up next to the paragliders, but went from launch to launch checking things out. None of them looked really great in terms of a nice air flow coming in.

I'm on the task committee, the protest committee and I'm doing the score keeping (but not the downloading). Monica is handling the downloading and the new version of GPSDump is very interesting. It doesn't use the Registry for assigning COM: ports. We'll see how it handles multiple downloads if she gets to that point.

Jonny called an FAI almost equilateral triangle task, 107 km (and Conrad and I agreed):

It's west out to an intersection just past a gap in the small hills, then southeast to a radio tower on a little bump, then back to the east launch at Borah where we have a 1 km radius goal. Folks can then go and land at Godfrey's. The exit start circle has a 5 km radius around the west launch at Borah.

I'm not pleased with the launch conditions on the southeast launch and there are no launchable conditions on the west launch. All the launches are in need of some weed and tree whacking for hang glider pilots and thankfully Dave Seib is around to get the work done with equipment from Godfrey. The launches are fine for paraglider pilots, even female Japanese paraglider pilots, but not suitable for hang glider pilots. In fact the whole hill could be upgraded to better handle hang glider launching, if you ask me.

I go back down again to the east launch which is the lowest launch, a very rough launch, short, in amongst the rocks, and only suitable for launching when it is blowing in good. I see a pilot take off in excellent conditions, and decide that this is the launch for me.

I hurry down and take off at 1:55 PM, 55 minutes after the launch has opened and five minutes before the first start window. Jonny has been in the air for half an hour, being the first to launch on the southeast side. When I was checking out this launch a small kangaroo came by and sat on launch just below us. Then Maxim launch potatoed.

I fell out of the sky until I turned right over a spine and hook into a thermal. The thermals were pretty darn nice and strong enough and I climbed in a couple of them getting to 8,900' MSL (GPS altitude) 25 minutes later. Unfortunately, that's nine minutes before the 2:30 PM start window (the third of four start windows) opened, and I lost 2,400' before I got to the edge of the start circle 43 seconds after it opened. I was behind and below a dozen pilots, including Blay and Jonny.

It was a six kilometer glide to the first thermal on the course. I could see a paraglider high and two hang gliders up with him straight ahead. I got under these guys and saw a gaggle of ten pilots going up at about the same rate (200-300 fpm) 50 to 100 meters to my left. After two turns I moved 250 meters down the course line toward what felt like better lift and ran into 1000 fpm. I started below everyone and now I was screaming up and leaving them behind. Blay and Jonny came and joined me and we climbed back to 8,200'.

Jonny, Blay, Jonas Belcher and I headed out to the west leaving the rest of the pilots behind. Fourteen kilometers to the west Jonas and I (and Maxim) stopped for 400 fpm just east of the little hills that form the northern edge of the gap. Jonny and Blay continued on and we lost track of them.

Working a few bits I got to the first turnpoint (WEARNT - the one just past the gap) with Maxim who got higher behind us. Jonas was right behind me. Maxim continued and got low going to the hills to the east, but Jonas and I found a nice 400 fpm thermal just past the turnpoint and climbed to 7,600' in order to be able to get over and on the windward side of the hills ahead.

Jonas took a glide along the course line, but I kept feeling lift along a line to the left of the course line and more directly going to the hills. Jonas sunk lower and lower from my POV and I kept getting lots of little pieces of lift until just before the hills I found 550 fpm to 8,500'. I saw Jonas further down the course line but much lower. Maxim was very low just above the hills and working weak lift.

There was a line of clouds to the east of the hills upwind and left of the course line perpendicular to it. I headed for them away from the hills. It was a twenty kilometer glide to them and I got down to 1,600' AGL under the clouds having passed up earlier lift under the first bits of clouds as it didn't feel right. I had to spend five minutes in survival mode before I finally found the core a kilometer away. This thermal averaged 460 fpm to 8,400' drifting me away from the second turnpoint in a 5 mph south wind. I was fifteen kilometers from the tower turnpoint.

There are a few scattered thin cu's ahead, so it looked good going to the turnpoint. I was able to find 480 fpm to 7,000' just before the turnpoint with a couple of other gliders around (including Maxim). I had lost track of Jonas and haven't seen Jonny or Blay for a while. I heard that later that they got low after the first turnpoint.

There was a little cu just past the turnpoint and with the south wind the goal was downwind. I climbed to 8,000' with 30 kilometers to get to goal. There was a sailplane thermaling up over Lake Keepit just to my north so I kept going finding more lift as I passed over the sailplane. Now it was beginning to look like I had goal made. There was a little patch of cu's about half way between me and the goal at the launch so I was thinking that they would provide any lift if I happened to need any. I went on glide and when I got to the cu's they are indeed pumping, but there was no need to stop gliding. I just kept going and while there was plenty of sink on the other side of them, I was plenty high when I get back to Borah.

Blay came in first with Jonny just behind him. Jonny is having a bit of a turn in his glider so its causing him to not perform as well as he should. He should have brought a Litesport. He didn't because he didn't want Blay to beat him (which he did any way on this first day). Pedro is flying the Moyes Litespeed S3.5 that Michi flew in Forbes and Bogong.

It was nice to see the scattered cu's today, just enough of them to make for good thermal markers. I didn't pay too much attention to the other aspects of the weather forecast after I looked carefully at the winds. I figured that we would be flying, that there was good enough lift, and with the light winds, a triangle would be an appropriate task.