Keith Smith writes:

I have been coming to the Team Challenge for seven years. I had
only flown once this year when I left for the Team Challenge, but I ended up
leading a team. My team was called the Scatter Birds, because we came from many
different area in this USA..

Unfortunately, the conditions were not suitable for flying on Sunday and Monday.
We flew Tuesday and everyone took his or her sled rides to the Henson LZ. Ollie
Gregory got a small thermal on the Southwest face. So Colin Hodsdon and I went
to the southwest face. We all sunk out to the LZ (Even Ollie). Wednesday the
wind was too cross and switchy to launch all the C pilots (10 teams of 5 pilots
each). There were some free flyers on Wednesday. They all said they had good
flights.

Thursday the launch was strong 12 - 14 mph but straight in. We were using a wire
assist crew in the active air. All the launches were good to great. The C
pilot's task was from the Henson launch to Dr. Dale's landing field 8.3 miles
away. The B pilot's task was from the Henson launch to Dale's water tower, 9.25
miles and back to the Henson LZ for a total of 18.5 miles. The A pilot's task
was to fly with the C and B pilots, getting them to their LZ, then head on to
Pikeville north of the Henson gap and back to Dales.

I lost one of my C pilots, Megan Kloudt, three quarters of the way to Dale's,
she got low and went out to the valley. She could not talk on the radio, so when
we lost sight of her, she was on her own. She climbed out of the valley twice
but could not get past the first gap. She had a great landing in what we thought
was a good field. It turned out to be the southern edge of a DNL, so she scored
0. Fortunately, Dennis Pagen brought us a great driver, Jouette Travis (the
Negotiator). She sweet talked the land owner and even made points towards us
getting access to his fields for landing use.

I did manage to escort my B's, Cliff Rice and Rick Brown, to their goals. My
other C Rick Maddy made goal on his own ahead of us. I then headed on my task
and made goal. My flight was 32 miles, 3 hrs and 27 min. It was a great 3rd
flight of the year. Those were the only tasks this year because conditions on
other days were not suitable for all the pilots.

Friday was blown out. There were five pilots that I helped launch on Saturday in
challenging conditions. We then shut down the launch because it became too
strong and switchy. A couple pilots took late flights after the conditions
mellowed.

My team finished in 6th place out of ten teams. The seminars have been awesome
all week. We have had seminars with Mike Barber, Dennis Pagen, Tom Lanning,
Terry Presley, Dave Hopkins and others. You can't put together a much better
group of mentors and they are all in here at the TTT Team Challenge. The Party
is going on right now as I finish up my story. Be here next year. I am honored
to call so many of these great people my friends!