28.04.2010
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The Flytec Race and Rally
The Blogs and Tweets:
http://westcoastbrit.blogspot.com/
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19703
http://www.jonnydurand.blogspot.com/
http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/
Wills Wing pilots - Jeff O'Brien, Jeff Shapiro, Dustin, Zac Majors
http://rich-lovelace.blogspot.com/
http://skyout.blogspot.com/
http://gottafly.blogspot.com/
http://ozreport.com/twitter
http://facebook.com/ozreport
Scores on-line:
http://soaringspot.com/2010frr/
The west wind returned today, as strong as ever, but we started with the
expectation, re-enforced by our efforts to have an upbeat attitude, that things
would be safe at launch. Everyone's emotions were out of control yesterday, but
today we were able to keep them in check, at least at the start, so that a bunch
of us could get into the air.
But the problem was for some reason unfathomable to me who watched it happen,
the task committee wasn't willing to let us head down wind under 6000' airspace. They
wanted us to go cross wind perhaps hoping that the wind wouldn't be so strong.
Talk about believing your own propaganda.
The launch conditions were as benign as possible for a west facing launch so I
was ready to go early and got in the launch line, but let others go around who
wanted to get off first. After a couple of weaklink breaks and three or four
pilots getting into the air, I got pulled up easily into 19 mph winds.
It took a while heading north to find the east west line of lift and when I
started circling at 2,100' everyone else in the air, by this time maybe six
additional pilots, joined me. We all circled up together at 200 to 300 fpm as we
drifted east of highway 33 toward Clermont, the wrong direction totally.
It was obvious that the winds were too strong for us to get any where near our
goal at Greystone airfield east of Ocala, 87 kilometers to the north northeast.
We kept finding lift, but going in the wrong direction. A few pilots went north
a kilometer to past highway 50, but they weren't doing any better.
After a while the futility of this exercise sunk in to everyone. Down below the
launch was shut down. Some of the tugs pilots were saying that the air was rough
coming out of the field. I found the air to be just fine up above.
Finally it was time to come down and see what the story was. It turns out that
the task was stopped (although that didn't matter a bit). The furthest anyone
got was Daniel Velez at 7.1 km, not even outside the start circle (but beyond
the 5 km minimum distance). He received three points and those of us who flew
and landed back at the flight park got two points.
I want to commend everyone for taking things much less emotionally today. It was
a pleasure to be at launch and a pleasure to interact with the safety and task
committees and other personnel. Everyone was professional and level headed.
http://OzReport.com/1272413722
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