It was a very nice last day of this years Horsham Week Competition. Collin was concerned about the wind forecast which as it turned out was very pessimistic and eventually winds never got nearly as strong as predicted. We flew a nice task and everyone seemed to enjoy this last day. The conditions were far from straight forward though.
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| bottle of wine, three 4 GB USB sticks and a "speech" for winning the previous day |
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| Jantars fly everywhere |
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| serious competition pilots on the grid |
The first leg was pretty straight forward and I maxed the circle out under a nice cloud street stopping only for the very best thermals. Second one was not too bad either and I had no problem crossing the Little Desert. I had the "IZI" Janus company till then and it was all working nicely.
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| smile! (by Mike Sudholz) |
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| putting SPOT on |
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| professional enough? |
My difficulties started on the third leg which was straight across the wind. Clouds started looking undefined, bases were at different altitudes, there was lift in the blue and some horrible sink. Not predictable at all. Following the lift patterns became impossible and the complicated search for lift under and next to clouds started. It was totally different with every single cloud that I approached.
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| ok, get me up there |
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| Mike posing for the press |
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| Arnold in the Peg |
Because it was all very unpredictable and I was getting low by the time I was able to find the next thermal I decided to turn back home not reaching the planned turn point in the last area. I basically just touched the circle and headed back knowing that I will arrive some 3 minutes ahead of time. I had some company on the way and it was much easier to fly the lift with a strong headwind.
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| by Steve Schneider |
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| sniffer |
It was a nice run back home and I landed on 17 where Ziggy was already waiting for me.
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| "there's gotta be lift around here ... somewhere" |
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| big derigging |
I finished the competition on the 4th position. It looks like it's my favorite one :-) I was hoping for the 3rd but didn't know the Australian lay day rules. Tim decided not to fly the last day. I didn't know though that he will be scored for the day and will get the average of the points he was getting during the whole comp. One more thing I learned about flying comps in Australia.
Here are the last day's results:
and the total competition results:
Like every other competition Horsham Week ended with a big dinner at the airfield.
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| our club bar |
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| Bernie presenting the back of "nosi nosi dusi dusi" T-shirt |
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| Tracey and Ziggy performing late night talks |
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