Bogong Cup Day 2

Boy the sky was looking great this morning!  Cummies popping off all the mountains up and down the valley!  A sight to make a pilot drool.  The drive up turned into the big adventure of the day.  Our car (the Czech car) got a flat tire.  Oleg, Radek, and I put our thinking caps on and tried to figure out how to remove the spare from under the bed of the SUV.  We checked the manual but couldn’t find a map to lead us to that ever crucial tool you can’t remove the spare without.  The jack wasn’t lifting the car enough to even get the wheel off the ground until I suggested putting it under the rear axel.  Jacking the car up was useless because the suspension would just droop and keep the wheel on the ground.  Finally I stumbled onto the magic tool under one of the rear seats.  Later once back on the road I found where we overlooked that little detail in the owner’s manual.  Guys can be so stupid sometimes!  At least Radek and Oleg have a language excuse.  Me, I got nothing!

 

Lucky for me I was back in the results yesterday.  My late launch position gave me some extra time to set up and I needed every minute of it.  Sky looked great, all the pilots were getting up.  Away we went.  The task call was 127k up/down, and across the valleys.  Today they switched to 30 minute intervals between starts.  Bummer.   We all lined up in light winds at the start gate for the first start.  I was a little low on the gaggle but in good position.  With a clean start I hit the course within 3 or four seconds of the gate opening.  Oleg and the heavies got a bit of a jump and I trailed them by half a climb.  With my lessons learned from the bad finish yesterday I restructured my strategies.  Now basing when to leave thermals and STF on glides more by how far I needed to get then just numbers.  The valley crossings were very long and most of the triggers were high on adjacent mountains.  Once in a good climb I was a bit more patient with cores when they petered out.  I would hunt longer for a secondary core and take it even if it was half as strong.  That made the valley crossings much more comfortable.  A large portion of the gliders that had charged ahead of me took a bad choice on a crossing and went to the lee side of a ridge.  They all got stuck or drilled.  I couldn’t make out Oleg or any other standouts but the pilots I was with were making good decisions.  The most notable of those was Davis Straub himself.  I have NEVER seen him fly so well!  His glider doesn’t glide so hot, but he was climbing well and making really good decisions. 

 

Flying more conservative I took the key climbs higher and flew a much lower speed ring setting.  One glide in particular was very long and I had decided I wanted to glide to a mountain top on the other side of the valley.  This particular mountain was alone in a large blue area.  Mt Buffalo in the distance was out of reach and topped on all sides by clouds.  I paid close attention to a set of wispys that appeared and then faded away over this multi sided mountain I had my sights set on.  Seemed as if alternate tips of the peak were taking turns pulsing on and off in about 3-5 minute cycles.  This looked like our best bet and with a good glide only me and another pilot could fly straight to the peak and over it.  I had about an extra thousand feet so I just boated around and mapped it out.  There were multiple cores and the area was clearly turning on.  The lift cranked up to well over 600 as the whole area cycled up.  Before I hit cloudbase a small group had left a slightly faster climb upwind of my cloud.  I was baffled how they could be climbing so well in the blue adjacent to this strong climb under a cloud but I wasn’t about to go fishing through sink for an extra 50 fpm.  I just used the markers to score a good glide line after them.  They charged a bit hard over a small ridge towards tunpoint 2.  It was buried back in a small valley behind Mt Buffalo.  I wanted to go into the valley high so as to have plenty of altitude to return back out after the turnpoint.  I wanted to get back to the ridge well above it, and not have to climb a face or spine.  After the turnpoint we mostly all retreated to a spine of Mt Buffalo.  I was sitting in the high seat flying smart.  The lift was ragged and tense for about 5 minutes but the next cloud was too far away to bail on it.  Oleg joined our group and about 6 of us charged on.  The next cloud was halfway to the last turnpoint and again we found the best lift well upwind of the cloud.  400 to 600 intermittant.  Oleg and I found some pockets to outclimb the rest of the group.  He left the climb above me but I was seeing some great numbers with my new 5030 firmware.  It now tells you how far goal is even when you aren’t on the final leg.  That saves memorizing or writing down the distances of all the legs.  Even better, it calculates best glide to goal no matter where you are on course.  The numbers were telling me if I topped this climb I could glide to the last turnpoint and on to goal almost 40k away!   Oleg went pretty deep into the turnpoint radius while I just clipped it.  I have been practicing that without a moving map, using just a turnpoint arrow, and it seems to be working well.  Not charging to the center of a turn saves more time and altitude then you would think.  The shorter line put me even with Oleg and we headed straight for the ridge that runs parallel to courseline.  He got above me and in my blind spot so I just dolphin flew along the ridge while watching my final glide numbers improve.   About 9k from the airport goal we came down off the ridge and dove for the coordinates.   Somehow 4 or 5k out we were neck and neck.  In an attempt to anticipate a race all the way to the deck I opted to open my upper harness zipper.  Its tricky to open so I like to do it first, and then just pull the cord for the lower zipper when I set up my landing. 

 

Ever get that feeling that you are about to lose it when you try to fly one handed and multitask,  but since you are almost done what you are doing you don’t want to stop?  Well, that happened as I wiggled the zipper up.  With 100% VG that glider showed me once and for all who is the bitch in this relationship!.   One hand and a chin kept the resulting  wingover from climbing out too steep.  Figures I would get my chance to race a Wolrd Champ and screw it up with such a freshman move J  I know the spectators watching from the crowded airport below enjoyed the show.  “Daddy, why is that glider doing loops while the other one leaves him in the dust?”  Oleg later admitted I scared him because he thought there was something big in the air about to sneak up on him.  I was bummed to see a small group of gliders on the ground but later learned they were all free flyers.  Next time I hope I get to carry the race all the way to the line, haha.

 

Fun Fun

 

Kev C