Friday July 8th
Fourth Contest Day
With the wide start lines here, gaggles are like soap in the bath – slippery fish that escape easily and dissolve and scatter quickly at cloudbase in poor visibility. So I started by myself and soon had a few followers – took a long time to find a climb in the strong (20kn) wind, and despite being sent on a second leg right down the Elbe valley (weak) there were unexpectedly clouds on courseline that looked great but were weak – A detour to the scrappier looking clouds in the forests south of course line would have been better.
I had a very good third leg until he clouds I was chasing fizzled completely over what I realized was very wet swampy land – amazingly Ifound a 3kn climb from less than 1000' over the wetlands and got back up but again a slow , rhythm breaking error. Note to self – remember to trust the area that generates the clouds more than the clouds themselves.
One pattern to my flights so far is trusting the look of the clouds instead of the terrain that generates them. I am deviating too much off course as well. Today I and yesterday I cured stopping too much but reading the clouds not the terrain was the problem.
Saturday July 9th Fifth Contest Day - Into the wave....
Felt good about the pre-start segment today - everything started coming together – up to 2500m in shear wave before the start – the winds were 30-35mph at altitude and we were basically VFR on top for a while. Spectacularly pretty with about 10 gliders milling about in the wave before the start. Couldn't stay in the wave long but it helped with good speed and distance to the first climb. I flew by myself and nailed the first climb (5kn) – caught up with some gaggles (pulk in German) but got low again in the middle of the second leg and really missed the cycle. A recurring theme – I'm focusing too much on only taking strong climbs and getting too low as a result – the old 'get high, stay high ' seems appropriate here....I'm used to winkling out strong thermals from mountain canyons, and managing flat land flights is quite a different skill.
Once up again I had a very good third leg with a push along an overdeveloped street into the 2nd turn area with a good last climb near the blimp hangar to get me back up on the last leg.
Sunday July 10th Contest Day 6
Today was very weak at first - huge gaggels in blue weak 0.5kn thermals waiting for conditions to improve. Some whining from the pilots on the radio.... I pushed 20km too far into the 2nd turn on a day that looked like it would last but didnt, and I paid the price – the great looking streets I was lining my task route up with dissipated as I got there resulting in two low saves and very weak thermals so I totally blew the day.
Once again good speed to the critical decision point and at a good speed for the day. Somewhat depressed last night about the landout (engine start)
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