oliver gregory <<olliettt1955>> writes:

The morning was beautiful with the valley filled with clouds. The view from the ramp is always so beautiful here.

The forecast was for ridge soaring conditions and good lift to cloud base at 5000' msl. We were concerned that it might be rough. By the time the launch window opened, we had nice west northwest winds and a sky streeted with cumulus clouds.

Since this was our first day, the task committee chose a simple task to Dr Dales for C pilots, Dr Dales and back to Henson's for B's and Dr Dales, Henson's and back to Dr Dales for the A's. It was not a gimme task for any of us since the task went cross wind to the cloud streets and there was enough sink between the streets to make the ridge lift fade out. We had lots of pilots into their goals, so everyone seemed pleased.

We have 40 pilots and 8 teams from all over. More on this later. We are waiting for some of the TTTers at Santa Cruz Flats Race in AZ to join us and take advantage of Mike Barber's coaching for the rest of the week.

It was a fun day with none of the rough stuff until time to land when the wind was switchy and made for some interesting landings. After we loaded up and returned to Henson's Gap, hungry pilots enjoyed fabulous hearty soup made by Wanda DeBerger and Dick Heckman. We did our debriefing and heard a great talk from Mark Stump on how we choose to fly.

Provisional scores are: In first place Team Area 51 lead by Jim Lamb on the Atos VRQ. In second place is Kinghts in White Dacron with Dave Hopkins on an ancient Atos. In third place is Team Acrosnats, lead by Tom Lanning on his Litespeed RS. In forth is Team Ooooos lead by yours truly on my VR. In fifth Team Xplorers Xc Xceptional lead by Dennis Pagen on his Lightspeed, but one of his pilots hasn't pinned in yet, so they may jump to first place when that happens. Team Tow Heads are lead by Miller Stroud on a VQ. Team 4Fs is lead by Bill Watters, and finally, Team Tree Topplers is lead by Jeff Laughrey and Steve Larson.

Our team of Cliff Rice, Leigh Sheridan, Jerry Keller, Barry Klein and myself had radio problems so only Jerry was talking to me. Mike Barber was helping out as a free flier today and did a good job with the only Ooooo, besides me, to have a working radio. We are all ham operators! Why would our radios let us down? As my buddy Mark Stump says, "Ya got radios, ya got radio problems." Anyway all the C's with radio problems made goal. I couldn't get out of there and landed with them. It was a fun day. Our team was very happy as 2 of our pilots had their first XC today!

We start video for the launch clinic tomorrow and will have that clinic going soon. High winds are predicted, but we had much lighter winds than predicted today. We have a blogspot for our scores http://hickarus.blogspot.com