Frewsy: Rat Race

39.5km Woodln-rabies-woodrat peak-burnt-cemato-dark hollow

Another high pressure day with a forecast ceiling of around 5500ft.. oh bollocks I thought to myself after I saw the forecast. Ok.. must do better than yesterday when almost everybody kicked my butt..oh the shame of it! :-) Anyway its all about fun down here and learning to fly in a technical valley system and land safely.

The wind techs have been having a ball of a time getting up early and flying all over the place. Of course they don’t have to wait for the start or fly a fixed course. However, Mr Wheeler again showed the lift over the Burnt area. A note for all of us methinks that we should have headed off there sooner.

I took off and it was soon apparent that there was quite a lot of ratty lift, expected in high pressure days.Typical surges and a lot of active handling to keep the glider on track. I got up to around 5000 ft where most folks were hanging around waiting for the start.

One glider in front of me took a frontal, then a negative spin, dived and pulled the reserve and landed at the back of launch. He had to get ambulanced out which took a while to reach him down the slope. In the end he suffered minor damage that we were all thankful to hear.

About 7 minutes to start I decided to move out to the edge of the start cylinder.

Woodrat above launch

I was around 4800 at the edge and thought I was in a good position until once again, a major flush came through. This time it was worse than the day before. I saw most of the field head out after the start to join me but we were mostly sinking. I got into a thermal and managed to get a little boost up and though what the heck lets go out into the valley and see if there was any more lift.

Heading out across the valley I turned once to check wind direction and it was coming from the Jacksonville direction. Hmm..the prevailing wind on launch was NW. I had the wind in my ears and then it all went silent and butter smooth. What the heck. I looked up and the wing was flying fine. Looking at my vario I was on a glide ration of over 350:1. Convergence zone? It was a sweet little glide but short. Soon I started sinking heavily as I got low to rabies ridge. It didn’t take too long to figure out I was in the lee of rabies. Ooops. I got drilled down to the LZ and then hit the valley headwind. A little speed bar and I made it safely to the LZ.

There within a short time over half the field landed out too. It was a low scoring day but 19 pilots did have the patience to fly around for an hour after the start around launch area waiting for it to get better. Once again Arun and Chris Amonson made goal and even got into the local newspaper as they landed at dark hollow.