Rat Race Task 6

67.5Km – Woodlz-Grants-Gold Hill – Naval – Cemeta – Dark Hollow

Had a personal best today regards height. Got to over 9600ft, which was enough to let me glide almost to the first waypoint. Didn’t make goal so those famous last words of “…should be relatively easy to make goal tomorrow..” didn’t quite pan out. However, I did catch up and beat CJ for once, so that was pretty cool!. Sorry CJ!

Again today I left later along with a few other pilots including Sam Mulder whom I have met quite a few times now. Sam wanted to stay back and follow the leaders and that was my game plan too. As we started late, a lot of the other pilots were already across at Rabies getting high so we wondered if we had left it too late. However, again off of launch we got up quite quickly and headed out across the valley to Rabies. This time there was enough lift going across to get us there above the ridge line, As normal, the thermals were strong and quite ratty but once in it was non stop all the ay up to 9600 and pretty quick. I didn't top out this thermal as I could see a cloud starting to form above me and headed off.

By this time the lead gaggle were way below me pushing out. I went on glide and followed the ridge line around Rabies and over to Mount Isabella and beyond. I should have tanked up around Bald mountain but looking around me I couldn't see anyone else get high they were just sinking out.

Flying over the ridges into a headwind, my tactic is always to cross the ridge first and then turn into the lift. You always get lift behind the ridge, but turning here into a headwind makes you go further back with little height advantage. 5 other gliders were doing exactly this, and at one point one of the turned back downwind and I had to move out the way to avoid him hitting me as he flew back. I pushed on I watched the 5 of them sink behind the ridge and land out.

My downfall wasn't that much later. Instead of turning in the minimal lift that there was just short of Grants, I pushed forward. I saw Sam hold back and circle not getting much lift however, his tactic was the right one. He circles for around 15 minutes in 100ft per minute which was enough to take him up another 1000ft and let him push on to Naval. Arun and John Mann also did the same and they did very well getting to Gold Hill. Talking to John later, he told me he could see me at Rabies and then just disappear into the horizon as I hit the speed bar. Looking at our Google tracks later it was interesting to see that our glides looked very similar between the 2 and 2/3 but the 2/3 had the speed to make transitions quicker.

As I searched for lift, a bunch of other gliders caught  me up but they were much higher. I eventually realized i would need to land. I headed ip the valley and into the wind. It was pretty poppy coming into land and around 200ft over the lz I had picked out I saw power lines running right across the middle. Yikes. I also then noticed that the fence surrounding the field was electric. By this time I was committed. I kept getting popped up and dropping down quickly. In the end I had to do a tight turn downwind low over the ground and cam around and landed. A bit like a death spiral landing. Not quite what I wanted! However, I was down safe and sound. I saw another glider later trying to land in the same field and radioed up to him about the power lines. He obviously heard me and headed off to another field. My good deed for the day!

As it turned out, the house I landed next too belonged to an American who not only knew what a Glaswegian was, but could also understand my accent! This was too good to be true! Yaba Daba Doo I thought to myself. Even better, he had a book called The Patter, which is a phrase book of Glasgow phrases which I also have. After we chatted, he gave me a lift all the way back to HQ. Thank you Dave Lorenzen!

All in all a pretty good day and my best of the week for sure. Still too impatient when I fly and maybe next year I might just windtech instead. We shall see!

Today, I will try and test my patience and see how far I get!

Happy July 4th folks!