Rat Race 2013 – Practice Day–22nd June

So here we are again at the Rat Race! This will be my 6th time here and it’s the 3rd time they are having both a Sprint and a Race competition during the week. This year I elected to fly in the Sprint as a lot of the Seattle crew had so much fun flying in the shorter Sprint format last year with EN B and EN C wings and not having to  compete with the XC gods on their hot IP6’s EN D’s. Also thought I would actually compete for a change and see how well I do in the shorter Sprint format. Also set myself a little challenge to actually get to goal this year by having a side bet with Jeff Slotta, John Schnebeck and Ralph Borium. For each km on course distance I get greater than each of them during each task of the comp, they pay me a dollar. Likewise for each Km distance on course they get on me I pay them a dollar. So, If we all make goal nobody pays anybody anything and we square up at the end of the week. If Jeff beats me by  say 10 Km and I beat Ralph and John by 5Km then I’m not out of pocket. So I have an added incentive to fly well this year.

Practice day is really just a way of ensuring that you find any issues with your gear prior to actually starting the real comp and a way to get any nerves out your system. I also used the day to configure the live streaming on launch and I’m glad we did. We had a few buffering issues as we weren't getting the uploaded bandwidth that I had last year so it was good to actually find that out and then configure the equipment appropriately. So now we are set for the live streaming when ever we start the first real task, which looking at the weather may be Thursday, sad to say. To get notified when we start streaming just go to the ustream web site for the Rat Race PG and click follow. We normally start streaming around 11:00am.

The weather on Saturday was great and the number of people here on practice day were in excess of 100. They set a task for the Race and Sprint competitors with the Race starting first. This mean that the Race folks all have to launch before the Sprint competitors get to launch. It seems a bit strange to me as it means that the Sprint competitors are all launching in stronger conditions.

The task for the sprint was a short 15Km around the Valley - Woodrat Start  2km exit – Rabies Peak 2Km – Off-RG 2Km – Woodra 2Km – Longswords goal. I was in line and about the 8th person to get off the hill. It’s a right hand day and not one I like but it didn’t bother me too much.

Iain launching custom Nova Ra, Yip, it’s the Scottish flag

However the air was pretty rowdy over launch..I was following a couple of gliders who were taking really large circles and falling out and in of the thermals which didn’t please me either. I let them go wide and turned a little tighter and soon I was about 800 over launch and above them and now flying with another couple of gliders who were doing the same. On one turn I saw Rich Hass head out to mid launch and thought what a good idea. I’ll go there get up and out. So I left the lift and followed him. Oops what a cardinal sin that was leaving lift. I got into the sink of the thermal and sank at 2.6m/s all the way to mid launch. I then spent the next 30 minutes scratching and not being able to get back up. Meanwhile, Rich had taken the lee side of the hill and managed to get one that took him up and out leaving me the only one to land in the Hunter LZ. Ah well, guess I won’t be doing that again if I want to save some dollars on my bet!

Most folks got up high and made the course easily as once above 7500 they easily glided the course.

Ok..so here’s hoping the weather changes soon and we get a chance to fly. Meanwhile, staying at the vineyard with Dave and Pam Palmer, owners of Fiasco winery has been great and they have a beautiful old property where the woodpeckers, chipmunks and ground squirrels wake you up around 6am every morning. Very cool.

So let’s now just wait for a good day to fly.