u would have gathered from Andrews previous post, I actually made it back to the airfield today and all as intended. The plan was to do a nice small task and be home before the weather turn on the water tap again.
Andy and I were doing a few other things around the place and planning a quick shopping trip to the nearest town (normally an hour total time spent, wheel up to wheel down) when Adam phoned up saying launching in 30min. In the list was lunch supplies so I reluctantly packed myself a non-standard lunch and towed EE out of the hangar. The LS4 really is a magic glider, it can be readied at the drop of a hat. Depending on how high you drop that hat from, Andy and I could just about have the glider fully rigged and ready to go before it hits the ground. But so we should after all the practice we've had...
G Dale and Adam had set a nice 200km triangle out to the West then East and back home to the West for the 3 of us to race. Quite a standard sort of task for around here so I gather. Because I'm flying a glider with slightly higher performance and handicap, to finish at equal score I need to be 3 minutes faster for each 100km flown. That didn't go so well for me today but it can only improve.
I am getting much more comfortable with the glider but there is quite a lot of tweaking left to do before I'll be flying at my 100%. Number one on the list is to change the audio vairometer that is in the glider. It is one of, if not the most crucial instrument in the glider and it is far from anything that I am used to. It doesn't help any that it was made in the dark ages... It is not total energy compensated and only takes static pressure for its measurements and whatever else it is doing. It is perfectly fine while in a stable climb but while decelerating and converting energy into more height it is useless at helping me find good thermals that are worth stopping for. Luckily I've got a great team mate (Adam Woolley, Alpha Kilo) who just so happened to have a vario in the box at home and one I know I will be able to fly well with. His crewman will be bringing it over from Aus in the next few days.
We had a very good debrief about the task this evening which I am hoping to do much more. G has got such a wealth of experience and I would be just stupid to to soak up as much as i possibly can. The common lesson from today was that direct on track is by no means the fastest route. I was penalised much more for my bad decision to not run the clearly stronger street early but G lost quite a lot of ground as Adam followed the best energy line as they exited a thermal together. AK was just maintaining clearance from cloud, following a long ark along the sunny side if the cloud gaining a considerable distance ahead of G who took the direct track home.
As for my first final glide, it got the blood flowing. As G and Adam were ahead they could tell me what to expect from the air ahead. The last 20 km were tricky. The clouds were whispy and scattered and it didn't look great from my point of view. I know all of the landing options within the last 10km but when there are so few it really makes things interesting. My last 10km was on a good glide but next time I will be looking to add more energy and be more conservative that I already was. The last 2km was what felt like just above tree top height until the forrest endes and the airfield starts. I would have been much more comfortable with 20 knots faster for that last bit and I think that I will certainly been doing that in future.
Tomorrow looks like it could be a non flying day but weather is so variable that anything could happen.
Nice article Eric
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