Flytec Nats Task 1

Strong North East winds are still the forecast but they have backed off enough to consider running the task. Before launch things are still looking rough so I took a test flight. It was rock and roll so we opted to wait a half hour then send the rigid wings off as wind guinea pigs. Our first gate was late at 2:45 but even still few pilots were in position to take that start. I goofed up mentally switching between kilometers and miles and mistakenly thought the start circle was much further away then it really was. It didn’t make much difference because Oleg and Nene hung back for a later start. After trying to reprogram my route twice I finally realized what stupid mistake I had made and just hung out and waited. Paris had already left but I wanted to fly with Oleg.

Once on course the marginal lift we had settled for inside the start circle got much stronger. At some points it was quite rough. We battled a cross wind all the way to the first turnpoint and into air that had more clouds then where we started the day. Oleg, Nene and I were leading strong (OK, I was just a pawn flying with them) but some mistakes near the first turnpoint put me about 1000 feet lower and behind. Somewhere around there Dustin also caught up. He was flying well to catch us there because last I had seen him he was a couple thousand feet lower at the start. Once past the turnpoint the cross wind had a bit more of a tail component and the glides got longer. Good clouds and dying clouds were marking the best lift on course. About 15 miles from goal Dustin and I got down to about 2 grand gliding in under a cloud. Oleg and Nene were higher and I had to settle for weak lift on the upwind end. I thought there was probably something better downwind (dustin was climbing well there) but I didn’t want to gamble loosing what might have been the only lift when already so low. After about 500 feet of climbing I shifted back and found the stronger lift. By now I was probably a couple minutes behind those three so I just topped out and went on final. They took a line upwind of goal and I just glided straight in.

Paris smoked the day from the earlier clock with Jonny not too far behind. Oleg rounded out the top 3 and the rest of us stacked up from there.