A beautiful sunny day with wind on launch starting early. Task was set to go from Launch across the valley to over to Rabies, back across to Burnt ridge (which you can see below top center), then over the back out into the Medford Valley.
All the Race pilots took off and slowly worked their way off on the course. With the wind getting stronger, it was time for the Sprint pilots like me to launch in the brisk wind. The conditions were not giving people much of a chance to get high, most of the pilots in the air by now were below launch, trying to get higher but with the wind pushing everyone close in against the mountain, not making any progress. The launch coordinators had to stop people launching several times simply because there wasn't enough airspace in the conditions to have people joining the group struggling to get out.
I eventually got in the air, only to spend 20 frustrating minutes trying to find anything that remotely might resemble a coherent thermal. No luck, so went to the bomb out field along with about twenty other people. I learned later that former competition winners had the same fate, so it just shows there is a lot of luck in this sport on a day like today.
Tracklog Flight 1
As the start window was still open, and the Rat Race is a pretty informal competition, they allowed us to go up the hill again and try again. This time a little better, I at least got 650m about launch so could at least push out into the valley. I got to within a 100m of the first turnpoint, only to encounter massive 5m/s sink in the lee side of the Rabies ridge. The sink was so strong that even with 16km tailwind I couldn't even make it back to official landing field or one of the wineries further up the valley. I landed one field away from the Hunter Landing field where we had landed early, so had a short hot walk in the sun.
Tracklog Flight 2
So a frustrating day, especially when I heard of some of the stories from pilots who did get away in the right thermal cycle. Once they got out of the valley wind that was sucking the rest of us down, they could use had both the height and the valley wind to their advantage and simply float downhill and downwind into the goal about 25km away in the Medford valley.
Such is paragliding!
All the Race pilots took off and slowly worked their way off on the course. With the wind getting stronger, it was time for the Sprint pilots like me to launch in the brisk wind. The conditions were not giving people much of a chance to get high, most of the pilots in the air by now were below launch, trying to get higher but with the wind pushing everyone close in against the mountain, not making any progress. The launch coordinators had to stop people launching several times simply because there wasn't enough airspace in the conditions to have people joining the group struggling to get out.
I eventually got in the air, only to spend 20 frustrating minutes trying to find anything that remotely might resemble a coherent thermal. No luck, so went to the bomb out field along with about twenty other people. I learned later that former competition winners had the same fate, so it just shows there is a lot of luck in this sport on a day like today.
Tracklog Flight 1
As the start window was still open, and the Rat Race is a pretty informal competition, they allowed us to go up the hill again and try again. This time a little better, I at least got 650m about launch so could at least push out into the valley. I got to within a 100m of the first turnpoint, only to encounter massive 5m/s sink in the lee side of the Rabies ridge. The sink was so strong that even with 16km tailwind I couldn't even make it back to official landing field or one of the wineries further up the valley. I landed one field away from the Hunter Landing field where we had landed early, so had a short hot walk in the sun.
Tracklog Flight 2
So a frustrating day, especially when I heard of some of the stories from pilots who did get away in the right thermal cycle. Once they got out of the valley wind that was sucking the rest of us down, they could use had both the height and the valley wind to their advantage and simply float downhill and downwind into the goal about 25km away in the Medford valley.
Such is paragliding!