Monday, October 03, 2005

Task 3

Today had a great weather forecast but it just wasn't apparent on launch. We hung back and waited while a few pilots punched off here and there. Finally a few good clouds popped off the ridge so Ollie G and I had a sprint race for the gliders. He lost his vario just off launch so went into immediate pimp mode. Conditions were super scratchy and I struggled with a bown out harness zipper. I pushed the frustration aside and made the best of the day. The pair of us crawled to the first turnpoint and back struggling to stay high. Most of the climbs were very slow and we didn't see any other gliders till we were most of the way back. Ollie's new VX has a phenominal sink rate that shows a big advantage in the 50-80 fpm climbs we kept getting stuck with. Lucky for me he had no vario so I could catch up every time I found a short core. A few times we got solid 2-300 climbs with a short 400 thrown in there as well.

I barely squeaked into the main whitwell LZ. Ollie thought about continuing on but came back to join me and share good times after such an epic flight for us. It felt good.

Kev

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