Final packing underway....a long drive tomorrow the length of California
I'm being realistic about my chances. I'm flying a four year old glider, and will be very lucky to beat all those Enzo, Icepeak and Boomerang pilots on their competition class wings. My comparisons will be with other pilots flying Ozone Delta, Delta 2, Aspen 4 and Gin Carerra or Tribe gliders. My race at Marshall last Saturday proved I can finish a 50km task, so I'm pretty excited at getting challenged by the big, full length tasks we will be flying.
Each day 90 or so Rat Race paraglider pilots will fly a competition task of between 30km to 80km. The 'turnpoints' in each course will be from these GPS waypoints. Usually each task has between four to eight waypoints plus the takeoff and landing.
At the end of each day, pilots upload their GPS tracklogs to the even organizer, and their score is calculated based on overall time, position, and how close you were to the leader.
Upload Tracks
Every competitor carries an emergency locater beacon. You can follow my progress at the XCFind site under the Rat Race folder. The tracker sends an update every 15 minutes or so when the active.
XCFind Tacking
Weather looks very promising for Saturday (practice day) to Wednesday. That would make 4 big competition days in a row. Based on 75% cloud cover on Thursday - Saturday, the results might be decided in the the first 4 competition days. Looks like strong possibility of overnight rain with a low pressure front coming through on Thursday night. Thursday through Saturday all look marginal for flying, although post frontal conditions on Saturday might be flyable if the cloud cover doesn't shut us down. Sunday after everyone leaves will probably be epic! Wind looks very typical with peak valley breeze of about 10mph mid afternoon from the northwest.
