http://soaringspot.com/2012rk/

http://westcoastbrit.blogspot.com/

SPOT Tracking:

Wolfi
here.

Ben
here.

Konrad
here.

Jonny here.

More soon.

The cirrus cloud cover mixed with cumulus from the front coming our way from the
northwest. This is the storm that caused the tornadoes in Kansas and Oklahoma, a
few days ago.

The front has turned into an occluded front backing up a bit north into Georgia.
The cirrus clouds reduced the lift north of the first turnpoint and goal at Lake
Placid airfield. But this didn't stop pilots from making goal after doing a
triangle after getting to Lake Placid the first time. The legs were both cross
wind and the last leg was back into the wind.

I launched soon after the launch window opened at 1 PM. I held on until 2,500'
and that allowed me to drift to the north in the south wind and join a couple of
other pilots circling in 50 fpm down. After about fifteen minutes we finally
found the rising air together and drifted north of the canal and got to almost
cloud base at 5,500'.

The start window opened at 1:45 PM, but I drifted outside the 5 KM start
cylinder five minutes early. I wasn't going to go back in the Falcon and I
wasn't worried about racing to goal. In fact I thought that the cross wind legs
up north might be a little too much for the Falcon, but I wanted to get to the
turnpoint at the airfield.

I headed out in front with Jamie and an Russian pilot following a couple of
minutes later when I found the lift on the east side of the difficult retrieval
area. I bird dogged for Jamie and the Russian and Charlie Allen racing to find
the next thermal in my little buggy, which liked to dive quickly out of the sky.

I headed north up along highway 27 looking for the best looking cu's and
noticing that there was a bank of cirrus to the north. There were plenty of cu's
but the sink that I experienced was horrendous. Others just glided along with
out a problem.

The pilots from the next start time caught up with me about thirty kilometers to
the north where we all joined up and got to cloud base. The cu's were indicating
some convergence and I found more good lift. As I got closer to the airfield, I
didn't find another good thermal so I kept searching under dark isolated cu's.
No luck so I just made it to the airfield.

Other pilots were high at the airfield and headed west to a thirty two kilometer
radius turnpoint then back to the turnpoint north of the airfield for a final
leg into the wind.

Mitch Shipley crashed at launch after a weak link break. He tried to stretch out
the down wind leg and then drug a tip turning it around and took out his keel
(at least). He then jumped on a Falcon and made goal. Well, without actually
doing the course, just like I did going to the first turnpoint.

Looks like Zac won the day and moved into third place, so far.