http://www.cucco2011.org/

Jamie Sheldon blog /task tweets
here

Jamie's tweets

Jonny Durand's blog
here.

Corinna's Sky
here

We had a fabulous task today with a northeast wind at three to eight mph and a
top of the lift a little over 6,000'. The task consisted of multiple turnpoints
that had us launching at the north Montecucco launch that faces northeast,
flying south east along the ridge line, then north out into the valley west of
Montecucco, then back to Montecucco for a point north of launch, then out west
toward Gubbio, then back to Segillo.

The forecast was for light to moderate lift to between 6,000' and 7,000'. 
It called for a blue day but we were fortunate to have wispy cu's. It looked to
me like a difficult day. There was a 6,000' ceiling for some temporary airspace
conditions on the west side of Montecucco.

The winds were moderate on launch, perfect for easy safe launches. I went up to
launch line 1, which was the steepest and was off in two steps. The climb rate
was not spectacular out front along the hill side, but there was consistent
lift. Earlier as the wind dummies huddled up to the left of launch we thought
that we might be stuck with 150 pilot hovering around launch. This turned out
not to be the case as we quickly spread out to the south. It was ten kilometers
to the entry start cylinder of five kilometers around some towers on the
hillside.

Pilots moved closer to the start cylinder leaving the main ridge and heading out
to smaller hills in the valley. I noticed a few pilots, maybe five or six,
heading out into the valley itself. When I noticed them turning I joined them,
found a better core under some cu's and hauled them over for a good climb to
5,800'. Launch was 3,700', so we weren't getting that high, maybe 4,000' over
the valley floors.

There were half a dozen pilots with me including Jonny Durand and I assume other
top pilots who had picked an upwind spot just outside the start cylinder to hang
out while we waited for the start window. We were in a perfect spot to take the
second start and we did. The Jeff's were low inside the start cylinder and had
to wait for the third start.

I raced with Jonny south to the towers five kilometers and then kept gong
another four before finding 300+ fpm lift. Jonny had stopped for lift that
seemed at the time to be pretty weak.

A bunch of us climbed up fast and soon the pilots who had found better lift at
the towers came and joined us. The lift was good down the ridge and I found 400+
fpm before racing into the turnpoint out in the valley to the south then back to
the ridge.

Coming back into the ridge at 3,500' I was presented with weak to no lift. I
kept pushing north looking for something better but finally had to settle for
200 fpm when I was down to 2,700' about 1,100' AGL. Apparently the pilots who
skipped coming back on the ridge line and went out into the valley had much
better lift. Besides that is where the next turnpoint was, almost all the way
east across the valley.

I finally found 400+ fpm just south of the first turnpoint at the antennas and
high, headed out into the valley to the next turnpoint to the northeast and
found lots of lift at 350+ fpm. Getting the turnpoint was easy and I climbed to
over 6,300' heading back toward Montecucco. I had been slow when the lift was
weak along the ridge but I was gaining ground fast now. I had seen Shapirio
1000' below at the turnpoint and O'Brien was some where nearby.

Coming back to Montecucco I was high and above the ridge line south of launch.
The wind was still out of the north east but the sun was on the west side now. I
soared the towers south of the launch but was only maintaining. I could see some
pilots to the north of me on the west (downwind) side of the crest heading
north.

As I wasn't getting up and I had heard that pilots were actually launching from
the west side of Montecucco now I hopped over the back and immediately got into
the rotor at 900 fpm down. I raced away from the hill side to get away from the
rotor as fast as I could to get into the valley and under some cu's but I didn't
have enough height and landed north of goal.  I had a beautiful long wide
newly cut hay field to land in into the wind and far enough away from the hill
side to be out of the rotor that they experienced at goal.

Shapiro found 1000 fpm up while I found 900 fpm down just a little to the north
of me. He climbed almost to 6,000' and made the course. O'Brien was a bit behind
me, ran into the same stuff and landed a little north of me with half a dozen
other pilots.

Dustin made goal, as did sixty or so other pilots. Manfred first, Jonny second,
Andre third, all very close.