Rat Race 2010 – Task 1 32.1 Km

WoodLz – Rabies – Burnt – Woodrat – Rabies Peak – Ruch – Purcell

Results are at http://flyxc.org/2010ratrace.html 

Today was forecast to be another high pressure day with some stronger winds up above. However, it turned out to be very similar to yesterday. The  task was called  with a start at 2:00pm and the launch window opening at 1:05. That happened at 12:45 so there was only 20 minutes to get your kit together and launch! Needless to say I was a little slower than the others and by the time I was getting ready to suit up the line was backed up. So as usual I decided to wait and see how things transpired before launching.

Gilead took off pretty quick today compared to yesterday and hooked a thermal soon after launch and within a few minutes was up around 7000 at cloudbase. And there were a few clouds today for a short time. I watched along with Jeff Smith and Ralph as the Seattle crew took to the sky!

I was in line around 1:30 and managed to get launched by 1:47. The main gaggle had setup right above the woodlz start cylinder perfectly place tangential to the next 2 turn points – Rabies and Burnt. I was informed afterwards that they tagged the first three waypoint in less than 10 minutes. In fact this whole task was completed in 40 minutes by Jack Brown flying his Ozone R10.2 wing…pretty sweet to see him launch.

Ok enough about them back to me!. At launch the thermals were coming right up the spine to launch and splitting on each side so you could launch on the West launch or the main launch. It was light though and you had to wait for a cycle. I got off at 1:47 and tried to find lift. It was very very rowdy from launch down to the midpoint launch and it felt like ages before I  started to get properly established in a thermal. Eventually I managed to get up to around 5600 and headed off to the start.

I found the convergence line across to rabies and got there still high which I was happy about. Climbed up to 6600 and headed off to Burnt. Other pilots were still climbing but I decided not to top it out. The Triton has great speed and glide and I took advantage of it as I went on glide from Rabies to Burnt and back to Woodrat area on a glide with about two turns.

However, when I got back to the Woodrat area I was back where I had found it to be really rowdy when I launched and I was not looking forward to it. I saw a Tandem wing thermalling above mid point and went down to join them. And what a great decision that was! We thermalled together in smooth smooth air all the way up to around 5500 ft where I saw Heather flying her Rebel as a free flyer. The three of us got up to around 6500 and I headed off to Woodrat Peak. I tagged that waypoint and just turned and headed back across the valley for Rabies again. By this point I had finally managed to catch up with a lot of the field whom I could see gliding across the valley. I decided to see how fast this little baby of mine could go and crushed the bar as I flew the convergence line. Thoughts of that stupid office depot commercial came to mind as I said WOW!. This flies fast. WOW! This flies really fast. I passed people gliding across as if they were standing still. I got a rush out of that for sure. I certainly get more a kick out of trying to fly efficiently and fast rather than high and slow and I love to see my flight track with a small number of climbs and straight glides rather than spaghetti tracks.

When I got to Rabies I managed to climb to around 6250 again and flew a lift band to Rabies Peak where I turned around and now was at last on a straight line to Ruch and goal. However my glide ratio to goal read 14:1 and my current glide ratio was 12.5 to one. I needed more height but thought what the heck it may be buoyant going across the valley and I had a strong tailwind now. I decided to go for it. I kept to the left of the valley and I thought at one point I had it but 2km short of goal I knew I needed more lift and tried to scratch for a short time. But it was not to be. I glided over other poor unfortunate pilots who had tried to squeak into goal also and finally landed 1.2Km short of goal!! No sooner had I landed than the pick up van stopped by and gave me a beer for trying! I packed my wing up and a nice lady with Conrad in the passenger seat stopped by and took us back to HQ.

Turned out there were 41 pilots who made goal today with another 10-12 landing just short. For me, it was a personal best at Woodrat and I think the points I got today were more than what I got totally for the last comp! I even got a few lead points! A good day! Chris Amonson came in 2nd today with a time of 43 minutes on his Boom 5. Awesome job. Meredyth came 3rd. Very impressive. All in all the Seattle crowd did us all well.  Tomorrow looks like it will be overcast so may be a late start if at all!