One more lesson learned yesterday: there is enough energy coming through even under a thick layer of mid and high clouds in here. My mind still hasn't switched from European flying. By the look of the sky yesterday I was certain that this will be a matter of coming back home and not the matter of speed.
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| sky to the south |
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| sky in the task direction |
It still looked good in the morning and during launching but right after the gate was open it turned into this:
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| here we go again |
It took me a while to figure out why my performance was so poor while Tim managed to fly over 90 kph. I came to the conclusion that it really takes a while to get used to the conditions in here and realize that as long as it's not bucketing rain there will be some thermals somewhere.
I was flying very cautious, staying high, taking whatever I could find on the way and desperately following all the sun patches on the ground. They then got less and less and I exhausted the last sunny climb to the top and headed under a thick dark layer.
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| this doesn't look like fun |
I then discovered that it was working even there. No strong thermals but nice and regular 4 knoters. I would have never said that it's gonna be that regular and reliable over such a huge shaded areas. It's disappointing that it took me that long to make this discovery but as they say better late than not at all.
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| XT on the grid |
Today will be tricky again. There is a weather change approaching from the SW and by the look of the sat pics it might get here in the afternoon and make it even more complicated. Geoff is predicting clouds and OD's. The task is short and we should be able to work out the weather development and adjust to it. We have again a 2:30 hrs AAT (153 km - 422 km) to the north and east.
Results from yesterday:
and total after 5 days:
There are some more competition pictures on the Wimmera Mail Times web site:
http://www.mailtimes.com.au/multimedia/35104/460173/horsham-gliding-week.aspx
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