The forecast was for the top of the lift at 3,800'at 5 Pm (3,200' at 2 PM), with a 12 knot northeast wind, and lift at 450 fpm (subtract 200 fpm for your sink rate). And absolutely blue, so no help from the clouds.

We called the same task as the previous day, 110 km to the south east to River Ranch with the turnpoint south of Wallaby Ranch on highway 27 just to keep every one away from the airspace. There was no chance of going into the airspace as we won't get that high (6,000' is the floor nearest to us).

We pushed the launch back until 1:30 PM to give us a chance to fly in the heat of the day. With no sign of lift and the wind dummy (Kevin Carter) not finding anything, we pushed it back until 2 PM with the rigids starting at 1:45. The last start clock was set at 3:30.

After the rigids launched I was the first flex wing glider to get into the air and Bobby in his new Pepto Bismal Pink Dragonfly hauled me right to the thermal that almost all the rigids were in. Unfortunately when I got there there was no lift and everyone went out in search of the next bit of non sink.

Down to less than a thousand feet west of Quest Air I cam in under two circling ATOSes and we climbed out at almost 200 fpm and I was able to get to 3,000' while these guys went out on their merry way on their task (which was the same as ours, only earlier).

I made a bee line back to Quest to hook up with the other flex wings that launched after me and we worked the weak lift in the 11 - 13 mph west northwest wind for an hour and twenty minutes and in large mushy aggregates of gliders until the last start clock at 3:30 PM.

Most of the flex wing pilots were in the thermal next to the edge of the start circle over highway 33 as the start time came. I found lift a little down wind and got a better climb getting back to 3,200' and was ready for action. I didn't want to jump back into that swarm (although, of course, it was what you had to do, stick with your buddies) and headed east a little to four pilot circling.

They unfortunately didn't have any useful lift so I headed south to the sand mines to pick up some lift there and found nothing but burbles at the tops of the trees at 800', not enough to sustain me and landed there. So that was quickly the end of my flight , but other were in the air quite a bit longer. Perhaps you'll find their stories on their blogs (see the last Oz Report).

I'll try to track down some results (won't be until later on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning) and report on that, and on any stories that I get folks to tell me.

The rules for the competition can be found here: https://OzReport.com/2007flytecrules.php.

The early word is that Jonny Durand was first into goal followed by Primos. Nine flexies into goal so far, Hans Keifinger and Mario Alonzi also in goal. Gerolf 150 meters short (oh, the irony (he argued against a 400 meter cylinder goal)) and Andreas Olsson was leading and may have gone down just before goal. Bjorn was third, Palmarini made goal. David Gaducci was in goal. Andre Wolf 5 km short. (I don't have a list of pilots to get the spelling of their names correct, sorry.)

Three rigids (out of eight) made goal - Yocom, Stennitt and Bott.

There is a link to the scores here: http://flytec.com/Events/2007/Flytec_Championship/Index.htm, but it is empty at the moment.

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