My Flight: The task was 26.8 Km with an entry waypoint south of takeoff on the ridge and the second waypoint a leap 3 km across the gap to Snake Mountain. I turned right on takeoff and gained 300 feet on a run up the ridge to the north and felt confident to go back south to grab the first waypoint with altitude over the ridge. Team florida launched 15-25 minutes after the start of comp. Many competitors launched up to 30 minutes prior to be at max altitude to begin. We will do that tomorrow. There was not much significant lift on the ridge so I flew out 1 km into the valley to get under an approaching cloud(west wind). Found 4-600 ft per min up and got 6800 ft (2 k over launch) for jumping the gap to Snake. Snake is a sheer ridge slightly lower than Tater with somewhat less dependable lift. I was able to tag the .4 km proximity radius and turn back to Tater. Some small lift was encountered but I was so high I didnt bother turning. Arrived back at Tater 1K over and cruised the ridge south till i saw enough clouds over the 3rd waypoint west in the valley to make a dash. Grabbed LZ2 and turned south for a long leg run up over the ridge of south Tater and across 4 Km to the radio towers north of Boone. In the Valley I hit speed bar when ever I was in sink and got down to 4200 when I hit lift just north of LZ3. This lifted me at 2-300 ft per minute over the ridge and finally 4-600 per minute to 6400 as I drifted into the backside no mans land with few landing options. I left cloud base and made a run south toward the towers and, due to sink, found my self low and unable to get over to the south side of waypoint 4. I was saved by a thermal under a passing cloud that started at 100 per minute up but eventually increases to 600-800 per minute and took me again to cloud base. This allowed me to relax, tag House Thermal 4 waypoint over north Boone and charge straight downwind toward the goal of Boone Airport 6 km distance. I called my Dad at every waypoint so he could chase me. The cold front had temps of 50 degrees at altitude so i wore my winter gloves. I had not cut a finger hole in the tip of these gloves so I had to take off the right hand glove to operate my GPS and cell phone. This was not a problem till I hit turbulence during an update cell call to my retrieve while soaring over Boone at 55 Km on speed bar. Not Good. Almost lost my glove getting the wing to fly straight. Arrived over the airport at 300 over for a rock and roll landing. Dad was there before I had folded my wing. So were 5 others who had arrived before me. Andrew landed 10 minutes later. Yea! Team Florida. More tomorrow.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 23:50:26 +0000
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