Very frustrating day with strong winds forecast yet an enormously ambitious 92km task set aimed at challenging competition class gliders. Seems like the task committee got carried away with a 'go big or go home' attitude after yesterdays task had 37 out of 48 pilots goal. Which of course made for lots of happy pilots!
After launching early and a long wait for the start, we had a huge upwind leg for over 30km over the freeway to the south of Grants pass. I got just 5km into the task and made a personal safety decision to turn around and go direct back to the bailout. The winds were just too strong and forward progress just too slow on my sport class Delta 2. I was so discouraged I didn't even turn my track in, which was kind of stupid as I would have actually got 8 or 9km.
Later back at Headquarters the stories came in - three reserve throws, two tree landings, determined pilots slugging it out for hours on windy ridge lines.
Instead of all that drama I did the beautiful circuit around Woodrat Mountain to Buncom on my road bike in the hot afternoon sun. It's was quite a lot harder and hotter than I expected with nearly 2000ft of climbs, but just beautiful scenery.
There was a lot of discussion in the evening about whether such clearly ambitious races should be set at this event. The competition class pilots know this area so well that the top ten pilots blast around almost any course in their Enzo's, Icepeaks and Boomerangs. But for the sport class gliders (i.e. 60% of the field), slogging 30km into wind at an average of 10km forward speed is really not a lot of fun, especially when there are so many other challenging
Results
After launching early and a long wait for the start, we had a huge upwind leg for over 30km over the freeway to the south of Grants pass. I got just 5km into the task and made a personal safety decision to turn around and go direct back to the bailout. The winds were just too strong and forward progress just too slow on my sport class Delta 2. I was so discouraged I didn't even turn my track in, which was kind of stupid as I would have actually got 8 or 9km.
Later back at Headquarters the stories came in - three reserve throws, two tree landings, determined pilots slugging it out for hours on windy ridge lines.
Instead of all that drama I did the beautiful circuit around Woodrat Mountain to Buncom on my road bike in the hot afternoon sun. It's was quite a lot harder and hotter than I expected with nearly 2000ft of climbs, but just beautiful scenery.
There was a lot of discussion in the evening about whether such clearly ambitious races should be set at this event. The competition class pilots know this area so well that the top ten pilots blast around almost any course in their Enzo's, Icepeaks and Boomerangs. But for the sport class gliders (i.e. 60% of the field), slogging 30km into wind at an average of 10km forward speed is really not a lot of fun, especially when there are so many other challenging
Results
Jacksonville summit at the start of my 'Too windy to fly' bike ride
