6000'

Amazingly we had a 6000' day today, well formed CU and it was only 6 degrees up top and not lower.

Andy keeps beating me to the ground details but as he said, new logger is in, new vario in and we still managed to get on the grid right behind G Dale and team mate Woolley, AK.

They'd set a 4.75-hour Assigned Area task hoping the day would be as good as forecast.  It was, but just didn't quite have the wide window we wanted.  An overdeveloped area on my second leg put me in the weeds and I told AK to stay high and tip-toe through. That gave him 30km on me by the time I managed to dig myself out. At the third turn it was again clagging over and I was taking short 3-knot climbs to keep me up in a good height band. By about this stage I had already aborted the task and told myself to just head for home rather than over-flying and continuing to the last turn. As the other 2 were getting closer to the field I heard them also make the decision to cut short and end it, but if it was actually the world comp it would have been a distance game.

Some adjustments still need to be made with my instruments. The power supply for my logger that we installed this morning was giving off heaps of RF noise and causing my radio to have constant static. It was horrible, then I decided to pull the fuse and let the logger and Vario run on internal battery. Another morning fix-up and we should just about have things debugged.

Radio comm's will be very important for the world's. It was just as frustrating for Woolley as it was for me today so hopefully we can fix it and have plenty of good practice flights to test it. The pessimistic outlook is that we will only fly three more days before the World champs start... anything could happen...