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

http://www.aerosports.net/ECC.html

http://soaringspot.com/2010ecc

http://skyout.blogspot.com/

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/7.6.2010/17:07

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?flightId=351204131

The East Coast Championship started off with a bang after the front went through
on Sunday. Little rain and the winds weren't much from that front although in
other locations that was not the story. It has been dry here for the last month.

With a forecasted  average 14 knot northwest winds (averaged between cloud
base and the ground) the task committee decided to send both the Sport Class (33
miles) and the Open Class (54 miles) to the southeast. There were supposed to be
cu's and cloud base at between 5,000' and 6,000'. Elevation here is 65'.

We had to deal with a military area that was hot and the
Salisbury airspace, but we could get around the airspace and stay out of the hot
military area by going to the southeast. We had the Sport Class stop short of
the airspace.

We have a new launch area at the airfield this year and it is more convenient
and more flexible allowing us to launch in a crossing grass strip in strong
south conditions. The wind today was coming from the north across the runway
from the right, but the field was wide and it was no problem launching to the
northwest. It's great to have these added options.

As the launch time of 1 PM approached there were a few cu's around but mostly we
had been seeing lenticular tops of cu's a few miles away indicating, as we had
seen on the FSL charts, that the winds were quite high above the inversion at
6,000'. Scattered higher clouds came over and I wondered if it was a good idea
to start launching at 1 PM given the strong winds and the 10 km start circle and
the 2 PM start time. Sport Class could start whenever they wanted.

But Dave Proctor and Larry Bunning wanted to go, so I joined the line right
after them and launched nine minutes after one o'clock. The launch line was full
behind me. Two minutes later I pinned off at 1,700' with the vario showing 1,300
fpm. I was in 600 fpm lift after I let go of the rope.

I climbed to 4,500' in that thermal then 5,700' in the one a short ways downwind
of it. I was below four other pilots but quickly caught up to them as we drifted
over the river to Denton at cloud base. We were still in the 10 km start circle.

Then the lift slowed way down and we were searching all around for something to
stay up in until the first start clock. The wind was 18 mph and blowing us out
of the start circle. A number of pilots had to start five minutes early as they
were outside the start circle and not all that high. Sunny Venesky started five
minutes early down at 3,200'. He found lift .6 miles outside the start circle
but by the time he got high (4,700') two minutes before the second start time he
was over three miles away from the edge of the circle.

Down to 3,500' John Simon found some lift just outside the start circle at four
minutes after the first start time. Larry Bunner and I joined him and we climbed
to 4,700' a mile and a half outside the start circle three minutes before the
second start time. We dove back to get the second start and got it twenty second
after the window opened at 2:15 PM  down to 3,400'.

We found weak lift at less than 100 fpm outside the start circle and worked it
back to 4,100'. John went off first as Larry and I watched, Larry was above me.
I decided to stick with John and assumed that Larry would go with me. He didn't,
and he went back for the last start clock.

I basically followed John Simon (off to one side or the other) after that always
a little bit below him and a little bit behind him except when we were in
thermals. There were now cu's every where and in fact it was looking congested
behind us. The clouds were streeting up and we had a direct tail wind (pretty
cool task calling, I'd say). We just headed for the next cu and didn't get too
low.

About thirty kilometers out I was off to the west of John and found the thermal
first. Daniel Spier came in under me in his ATOS (we are scoring the ATOS and
Millennium with the flex wings for now giving them a handicap) and John came
back over me by about 100'. We climbed up but that was the last I was to see of
John. The track logs show that I came in under him in the next thermals on the
way to goal but I never saw him.

Pilot are creating their on track log files many using the computer here at the
flight park. They are emailing them to me and SeeYou is automatically (well
almost) scoring and updating the Soaring Spot (see URL above).