Pilots are requesting that the briefings be briefer, so I think I will have to apply a strict guillotine tomorrow! This morning the pilots were a bit restless, and were not paying serious attention to the safety briefing, and had obviously completely switched off by the time the operational briefing came around, judging by the number who did a right circuit instead of a left circuit at finishing. We introduced a control point with a 2km radius today, so that everyone would finish from the same direction. It gets very hectic with all the gliders coming in very close together in time, but luckily our strip is so large we can cope with it OK.Anita Taylor helped with the formatting and printing of the task sheets this morning - much appreciated - and they should be even better tomorrow. I am saving all this stuff in case we ever have to do this again.
The pilots are all getting used to the drill, all got ready for a 12.00 launch, and the launch started bang on time again. We had much more help with running ropes and hooking on today, and the soaring conditions were better, so we were able to launch the gliders quite a bit faster. So fast in fact, that I missed the end of the club class and forgot to tell radio operator Jo when to open the start gate! We also had a bit of a to do with a glider with a faulty release again at about the same time which distracted me.
The task was Bingara 40km, Bellata 30km, Emerald Hill, 30 km and Start point B2 as the control point. 3.5 hours for Club Class, and 3 hours for Sports class.
Not a lot happened on the ground, so some quotes from pilots...
Bill Hatfield "lovely day, got to cloudbase, good lift over Kaputar 12 kts for a short time"
Nick Singer's experience "Good first leg with reliable lift under cus. Continued north of both turnpoints - set TP at Gurley on the northern edge of TP2. Turned around at cloudbase to find all the clouds in the valley gone! Major detour to Kaputar (unnessesary) and slowed up (mistake) went to mine E of Edgeroi and came home on final glide at 120 kts over the lake for a straight in landing. Brad Edwards came under me just as I lowered the undercarriage!!! 10 gliders landed in 90 seconds but no conflicts - good airmanship."
Bill Wilkinson "Cloudbase at around 8000ft - dome under the cloud. Almost went into cloud gliding away from the thermal as the lift was so strong. Rough flying fast in unballasted glider"
Tuggies:
- Val "All gliders released in a timely fashion - except one hung on a bit too long. Good lift on tows speeded up the launch."
- Juho: "Only had to throttle back twice to get gliders to leave."
- Garry: "One glider pilot very politely said he was going to release but that there were two gliders on my left to watch out for - how thoughtful"
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