Chelan Open Day 4, Task 2

The launch at Chelan is on the western side of the enormous Columbia river, and the hardest part of most flying days here is crossing the river valley and getting into the flat lands. With southerly wind forecast, oday's task was called as a 70Km race directly up the river to Okanogan in the North and debate raged around one question, to cross or not to cross? Fly the west side of the river in the hills or cross immediately to the flats and get a straighter downwind run at goal? Much talk of how the hills never worked, the early wind techs not getting great height and dusties showing all over the flats combined to make up my mind - cross early and fly the flats.

If you want a succinct and intelligent breakdown of the whole task, I recommend heading over to Brian's blog now. However if you want an excruciating blow by blow description of the first 10Km, by all means read on. Sorry, need to do this for me as much as you ;-)

The majority of the field formed a large gaggle around 2100m a few minutes before the start (the same height we comfortably crossed on Monday) and most pushed to the upwind side of the start gate preparing to cross the river. Then something happened. The race started and a group of about 15 gliders directly upwind from me began to cross, I turned and began to cross the river and a few moments later looked over my shoulder to see the remainder of the field flying directly north to try the west side of the river. I was already downwind of the crossing group and likely to be further downwind, and alone, by the time I crossed, I watched Brian zig and zag working out which way to go and a few moments of indecision later I turned left and went for safety in numbers.

There wasn't any major sink on the first glide but we were flying onto higher terrain so not a huge amount of height to play with. I joined a few gliders climbing away from the main gaggle in what looked to be a much better climb. There was plenty of lift around but it was more a case of averaging out the general area. Back at 1650m I had hunted around for several turns in zero and less when I saw the lead gaggle a short glide downwind and climbing well. I glided in under them, found nothing, flew to a smaller group of pilots circling nearby, found nothing. Even 100m off the valley floor I wasn't overly worried as I'd managed to fly onto a rocky, sun-baked windward facing bowl - the kind of place where you would think the laws of thermodynamics shouldn't actually allow air to go down on a sunny day. Apparently they do.

In the end, half the field of 82 pilots got to goal, including all the pilots I was with in the climb I left to chase the lead gaggle. Brian was in that climb and said it eventually got them to 2300m, slow but it got there. I was happy with all of the decisions I made during the flight, but obviously leaving that climb was what broke the day for me.

The lesson for me was to get established on course before you start racing. Zeroing at 1650m about 1100m terrain doesn't count as established, not enough to go chasing the lead gaggle, especially when they are less than half a glide ahead. Also I should have been positioned better at the start, I wasn't focusing as well as I could have been in the 10 minutes before start which is when the decision should have been made on which route to take.

Results are here

Friday looks like another windy day.

Chelan Open Day 2

Only our captain America could fly today...

Chelan Open Day 1, Task 1

What a learning experience today! We had a 58Km task with a 48Km leg fighting a strong crosswind from the south. Have a look at my saw-tooth tracklog:



The batteries on my new vario went flat about 10Km into the task with no spare so I was flying off the gps altitude only. My fault, I know much better than to turn up to a comp with an instrument that I have previously turned on only once and tested exactly never. It was actually nice to go back to basics and feel out the lift and I had a lot of fun toying with myself in the crosswind - climb high or leave and push back to the course line? In the end some high cirrus drifted over and slowed the climbs down to make the task very tricky for pilots who were behind the leaders and downwind of the course line.

Looking back at my tracklog was a good exercise though - you can see that all the climbs were drifting directly north once we reached the plateau and it was hard work going crosswind like that, but in my last climb the wind hand changed 45 degrees to the south west. I didn't notice this at all during that climb as I think deep down I had convinced myself it wasn't going to be possible to get to the SIMS turnpoint anyway. In hindsight I could have taken a more easterly track on my last glide had I realised how much the drift had changed, covered more ground and maybe got back up. That's one of the great things about comps, after the fact you can always see where you went wrong, what worked for other pilots then go forth and emulate!

Results at www.chelanxcopen.com/results.htm

Portland to Chelan

Brett Hardin, Doug Mullin and I traveled to Chelan together in Brett's ute. Brett has some back issues so sitting isn't very comfortable. He worked out a novel way of making the 7 hour drive :-)

USA bound

Landed in the US to spend about 10 weeks over here in Portland with Katje. I've been here 4 times in the last 2 years and always the same question going through customs when they ask how long you'll be in the country, if you say anything more than 2 weeks you get "How can you afford to spend so much time away from work?" They don't ask about being away from home or away from family or away from your dog but away from work, because that's what life is all about right? I'm tempted to tell them I'm here for 12 hours and have to rush back to Oz but no doubt that would end with me stuck in a small room with a sinking feeling and latex-gloved customs official.