22.4km Race to Goal. Looked at the cumulative results this morning and was surprised to see myself in 11th place overall!
Conditions were much more stable, with wind predicated. Indeed the hot and windy conditions created a lot of bombouts today including myself, with only 12 in goal, and me way back at 59th. That'll be enough to probably drop me back to the top 25 if I'm lucky.
After the start I got enough height to get across to the start, which was one ridge over on the Burnt Ridge. However the thermals that worked so reliably yesterday were cut up by the wind, and I wasn't patient enough to get really high. Then I picked the wrong point to cross out into the valley to tag the Rabies turnpoint and hit huge sink. I was able to tag the turnpoint, but had no choice but to return to the Burnt ridge, instead of going for the Rabies ridge with it's more reliable thermals. So I arrived back at Burnt under ridge level, and did twenty minutes of ridge soaring trying to find a thermal that would get me higher again. Nothing worked, and I started to wonder if I had even enough height to height to push out to the Hunter LZ against the strong, hot and gusty headwind.
Eventually I committed to the glide, and the baking valley fortunately gave me some bubbles of lift that got me safely to the landing field with 100m to spare.
Leonardo Tracklog Task 5
There are a lot of people landing - including some good Race pilots who couldn't find anything over launch to even go anywhere. The wind was whipping up the valleys making lift really hard to find, and making final approach in the Hunter LZ 10-15 km/h...It was interesting watching pilots calculate or not calculate it correctly. Certainly very different from yesterday when the conditions improved and mellowed as the day went on.
Back at the Race HQ we did a bit of Flymaster programming. I succumbed to buying the device after seeing that if you are going to take paragliding competition at all seriously, my old GPS 60 just doesn't have the functionality to work.
After the start I got enough height to get across to the start, which was one ridge over on the Burnt Ridge. However the thermals that worked so reliably yesterday were cut up by the wind, and I wasn't patient enough to get really high. Then I picked the wrong point to cross out into the valley to tag the Rabies turnpoint and hit huge sink. I was able to tag the turnpoint, but had no choice but to return to the Burnt ridge, instead of going for the Rabies ridge with it's more reliable thermals. So I arrived back at Burnt under ridge level, and did twenty minutes of ridge soaring trying to find a thermal that would get me higher again. Nothing worked, and I started to wonder if I had even enough height to height to push out to the Hunter LZ against the strong, hot and gusty headwind.
Eventually I committed to the glide, and the baking valley fortunately gave me some bubbles of lift that got me safely to the landing field with 100m to spare.
Leonardo Tracklog Task 5
There are a lot of people landing - including some good Race pilots who couldn't find anything over launch to even go anywhere. The wind was whipping up the valleys making lift really hard to find, and making final approach in the Hunter LZ 10-15 km/h...It was interesting watching pilots calculate or not calculate it correctly. Certainly very different from yesterday when the conditions improved and mellowed as the day went on.
Back at the Race HQ we did a bit of Flymaster programming. I succumbed to buying the device after seeing that if you are going to take paragliding competition at all seriously, my old GPS 60 just doesn't have the functionality to work.
