World Championships, Day 7

We flew today! It was sunny and very hot (37 C), and not too much wind. Up on launch it was blowing up on several launches so I chose the west launch, even though people were launching off all launches. Once in the air it was an easy climb to cloudbase (2300 m) and we thought it was gonna be a fast race day. Boy, were we wrong!

The task was to Tamworth (57 km, via a couple of turnpoints); it being a weekend we had special permission to fly into Tamworth, provided we stayed out of the controlled airspace and to the east of the highway (there is a major airport in this town).

Once at cloudbase we had a 30 minute wait until the race started, and of course just as the start approached the lift died, and we were all scrambling for lift as the start came and went, meaning a lot of people had a late start. Had the start been 30 minutes earlier we would have had an easier time of it!

Anyways, after getting the start it was off to Manilla town for the 1st TP at the sports fields. In contrast to the abundant lift right over launch, once over the flats it was hell, with practically no lift and lots of pilots in your way. Our gaggle spent about 1 hour over the 1st TP at about 1000 m (and the ground is about 370 m), in 0’s mostly, with the occasional 0.5 m/s, followed by a –0.5 m/s. People were yelling at each other, turning all sorts of directions, and generally being very rude to each other in the game to get the most lift out of the “thermal” (I hesitate to even call it that, it was so random). There was at least 1 midair; I heard it and looked down to see the gliders separating, with one glider with a big cravatte (or broken lines, it was hard to tell), spiralling down until he threw his reserve. It opened OK and he landed in the sportsfields in a tree next to the river, and was apparently OK. The other person continued flying so I guess their glider was OK too.

After a midair you’d think people would smarten up, but no. The shit show continued until some sort of general consensus was agreed upon that this was about the best we were gonna get for this climb, and we went on glide (from about 1600 m). Another gaggle had been in front of us, in the low hills, and were having much the same problems as us, but just a few km away. We chose a line that was closer to the highway, but over the low hills, since it was obvious the flats weren’t working that well (they’re all green and still have standing water in them) and the hills were the only things with clouds over them (but even the clouds looked anemic, unless you were 100 km to the east, where they were going off).

The gaggle never really got small, and every little piece of lift was taken advantage of, so the going was slow. In this fashion we made our way to the next TP at the Attunga Mines. Up to now we had stayed in hill country in an attempt to stay high, but the Mine is out on the flats, so we had to venture out to tag it. By this time we had been flying for 4 hours and it was getting late, and it was obvious we weren’t going to make goal based on the fact we were flying so slow and the task ended at 6:30pm. We got as high as we could and made the dash to the Mine, tagged it, and tried to get back to the relative safety of the hills. No luck, and just about everybody (including me) dirted it about 1-2 km SE of the Mine. There must have been 50 people who landed in that general area during the afternoon!

In the end about 13 people made goal (and it took them over 3 hours to do it!), with 15 or so just short, and most people landed near the Mine. That is about the 40 km mark, and after 4 hours of flying (plus the 1 hour flying while waiting for the start), it meant 10 km/h. Pretty much the slowest XC I have done in a long time, and we are just bone-tired after that kind of day: both physically (we spent most the flight low, in the extreme heat, wearing way too many clothes) and mentally (keeping an eye out for potential midairs, calculating who was climbing better, what line to take on glides, etc.). So, since nobody from Teams Canada or USA made goal we are all going to have eat a package of Vegemite tomorrow morning (see Will’s blog for the explanation), as penance!

Nicole