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topic: Attila Plasch

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A few comments on JD's analysis

Fri, May 20 2022, 6:42:47 pm MDT

Why did he take the time to look at this issue?

cloud flying|Daniel Vélez Bravo|FAI Sporting Code|J.D. Guillemette|Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

JD writes:

The thing is I first reviewed the track logs from day one to see if my perception was correct. Turned out, I was wrong.

So then I looked at day 3 expecting to see Velez way above everyone by 1200' and cloud flying, that was the rumor. Instead, I saw him just a bit higher than others and presumably by himself in the blue. After reviewing the replay it changed my mind of what happened and felt I needed to point it out and squash the rumors.

Like JD I also looked at the pilot's track logs. I used SeeYou, which normalized the data, so that all the pilots altitudes were comparable. I was the pilot A in JD's map. I found cloud base to be 5,100'. I found that at his highest Daniel was at 5,236'. I also found that Daniel was over 4,000' to the east of pilots C/D, away from the cloud.

Should the 200 point penalty that Daniel received be rescinded and he be given the 10 point penalty as per CIVIL Section 7A rules?

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Cloud Flying »

Fri, May 20 2022, 6:40:21 pm MDT

A careful look at the data

cloud flying|Daniel Vélez Bravo|FAI Sporting Code|FS|J.D. Guillemette|Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

JD Guillemette writes:

My take on the Daniel Velez incident on Task 3 of the Wilotree National.

Daniel Velez was penalized 200 point on Task 3 for cloud flying and/or being too high above cloud base. Some estimates were that he had taken 1200ft unfair altitude advantage and he had an unfair advantage all the way to the 1st turn point.

I want to first say that I do not condone cloud flying, it’s dangerous, in violation of Federal Aviation Regulations and unsportsmanlike.

I have reviewed the replay of the pilot's track log IGC files from Airtribune and all the altitudes are the raw data as reported by the trackers and was the data used for scoring. Because the altitudes are not normalize , i.e. every pilot's launch altitude it not set to the actual GPS altitude which was the same for all pilots, there will be discrepancy if the same data is normalized with SeeYou, FS, or other programs due to altitude correction at launch.

To start the analysis we need to estimate cloud base. There were two clouds of interest that pilots were thermaling under. One cloud was near the edge of the start cylinder with Pilots A and B (among other) and another cloud to the Northwest with Pilots C and D (among others), please refer to the location map.

It’s difficult to determine the actual lateral boundaries of the clouds, but the center to center distance between the two thermaling groups is about 2.6km. Between time –00:08:04 (8 minutes before the start gate at 2 PM) and –00:06:28 pilot’s A and B maximum altitude was 1591m (5220’) and 1587m (5207’), we will assume that they were not cloud flying and this is the approximation of cloud A/B base. Between time –00:04:37 and –00:03:50 pilot’s C and D maximum altitude was 1535m (5036’) and 1543m (5062’), again assuming they were not cloud flying, we can assume this is the base of cloud C/D. There is already some degree of uncertainty of the cloud bases as they varied, but for sake of argument cloud base is between 1535m (5036’) and 1591m (5220’).

At time -00:01:25, Velez reached a max altitude of 1669m (5476’) at the location show on the map. He was right about equidistant between the two thermaling groups, and by his own admission higher than cloud base and not in the cloud with the cloud wall to his West. But how far to his West? Without knowledge of the actual lateral boundaries of the two clouds we don’t know for sure, but assuming a cloud diameters of 1km centered over the two thermaling groups, it’s mathematically possible that Velez was at least 2000’ laterally from either cloud. If so he may not have violated the Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) of 500’ under and 2000’ to side of a cloud.

At time -00:01:00 Velez stopped circling and proceeded to the edge of the start cylinder about 1km away. He crossed the start cylinder at Time +00:00:05 at 1595m (5233’) altitude. If we use the higher estimate of cloud A/B base (which was the cloud closer to the start cylinder) of 1591m (5220’), Velez started the race at 5 seconds past the first start gate at cloud base altitude, a near perfect start!

Between times +00:01:02 and +00:01:32 a large gaggle of pilots including pilots from cloud C/D crossed the start cylinder at altitudes ranging from 1231m (4039’) to 1325m (4347’). Velez was 900’ to 1200’ higher crossing the start cylinder than the following gaggle. This was the perceived “unfair advantage” Velez had taken.

However, Velez had an excellent start, right at the assumed cloud base altitude and 5 seconds after the 1st start gate, this was not an unfair start and any other pilot could have fairly started from the same position. The following gaggle had a bad start, headed for the start line from over 2km within the start circle, over a minute late, and giving up as much as 300m (984’) from their previous altitude. It wasn’t that Velez was too high, it was that they were low! If any pilots in that gaggle felt they had a poor start, they could have returned for the second start gate and tried for a better start. After all, isn’t that why there are more than one start gate, to try to get the best start you can?

It was also said that Velez took an unfair advantage prior to start by climbing to 1669m (5476’) which was between 134m and 78m (439’ to 256’) above the two cloud bases. But from the altitudes reported by pilots A/B and C/D trackers there was a variation in cloud bases and these two locations were over 1.3km from Velez’s position. Who is to say which cloud base altitude he was to reference? What if there a third developing cloud right above his location and he was under that base, would he now be below cloud base? Furthermore, the race starts at the start line, at the start time, Velez had timed it perfect and had no unfair altitude advantage since he was at cloud base altitude when he crossed the start line.

With regards to having an unfair advantage all the way to 1st turn point, at about time +00:23:53 and about half way to the 1st turn point Velez was with other pilots in a gaggle and no higher than anyone else. The author (Guillemette) and Velez left this climb at cloud base together at about the same altitude and were not the front runners. Additionally Velez was 3rd to reach the 1st turn point and at an altitude less than the two pilots in front of him and the two other pilots that made the turn point the same time he did. So any perceived unfair advantage he had to the 1st turn was a false claim.

FAI Sporting Code, Section 7A - 1st May 2022 (see 6.3) was also cited as the reason for the penalty. The key element cited from the rule is:

“Since it is against the law to climb up the side of a cloud above the transition level, this may not be an acceptable excuse for being higher than other pilots in the case of a complaint”.

But just what is the interpretation of this new rule? If we as pilots were crossing a “blue hole” and the nearest cloud is 10km away, is it saying we can not climb above the base of that cloud? Certainly not! What if the nearest cloud was 5km away or 1km (3000’)?

The text of the rule is “…climb up the side of a cloud…”, this implies that the pilot is in close proximity of the side of the cloud. If we look at the FAR, climbing up the side of a cloud would also be a violation. But what if the pilot is more than 2000’ from the side of the cloud as required by FAR? IMO, this new rule is moot in the USA since the FAR will not allow us to be more than 2000’ from the side of the cloud. We don’t know for sure since we don’t know the lateral boundaries of the cloud at that time, but Velez says he was 800m from the side of the cloud. As mentioned before, based upon the location of the two thermaling groups relative to Velez’s position, this supports Velez’s claim.

Furthermore, the cloud flying 1st offence penalty is 10 points (no warning). Although 10 points seems too small, keep in mind there is no warning, IMO the points are assigned to remove all doubt the pilot had a 1st offence. 2nd and 3rd offences are much stricter to strongly discourage cloud flying.

My point is there is very little hard evidence Velez did anything wrong or deliberately took an unfair advantage and in my opinion the 200 point penalty was excessive and could not be supported by fact or rule.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Thu, May 12 2022, 9:00:34 pm MDT

Daniel Velez Bravo's analysis

Daniel Vélez Bravo|Davis Straub|Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

https://danielvelezbravo.wordpress.com/

Translated into English:

https://danielvelezbravo-wordpress-com.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Until the start of the championship and until the night I was sanctioned, we were aware that flying in a cloud consisted of completely disappearing inside a cloud, from the view of another pilot who was just below. Strictly speaking, it is what pilots call “white out” and it is that everything turns white in all directions, so there is no relationship with the ground or the sky. Under this criteria, I take it very seriously when I am in championships, to never fly in the clouds, and always make sure I am below or next to them, obviously getting as close as possible to gain the greatest advantage without losing sight of the ground or of the horizon. On day 3, 8 minutes before the start, I got much closer than expected to the base in a strong ascent and I had to retreat 800 meters to the side of the cloud, to make sure you don't get caught inside it. And just before the start, where I took the highest altitude and the best position, I was flying with the wall of a cloud to my west, but with more than 180° of open sky, down, up and east completely open and clear.

However, that night of the sanction, reviewing the rules of section 7 that regulates international sports aviation, we found an addendum of May 1, 2022 (that is, it began to be applied one day before the start of the championship) that it had a single strange mention that "climbing on the side of the cloud is illegal", and that mention was tied to the fact that this might not be considered an argument to be higher than the other pilots.

With this mention then, the evaluation committee reviews my situation and analyzes if I broke the rule by climbing higher than the base of the cloud, as I accepted in my interview, and they conclude that indeed, under the criteria of the FAI standard of the May 1, 2022, I did something wrong.

Now then the other part of the story appears: What is the sanction for this type of fault.

It turns out that the local regulations of the event did not have anything written about flying in clouds, so as Davis Straub noted, this gap must be filled with what section 7 says about it .

So, since I was indeed accused of flying in clouds, and I accepted that I used the side of the cloud to justify my additional height but that statement was not received, the director applied the sanction of flying in cloud, but unbelievably, and despite the fact that Davis Straub warned him, the sanction they applied of 20% of the points, which was not in the local regulations, nor was it supported by the international regulations, exceeded by 190 points the sanction for the first offense of flying in clouds, which is, as we copied above, only 10 points!

You don't have to be an expert then to see that my difference of 55 points with the first official place in the championship is nothing more than an improperly applied sanction, from a director who doesn't listen to reason or bother to sit down and talk with me, and that I was probably influenced by those who filed the cloud flight complaint(s) against me.

In summary: They applied a sanction 20 times more serious than the sanction defined for flying in clouds, and they did it without mentioning who reported me, nor being able to review or refute their reports, and despite the fact that the technical report with which they sanctioned me I was completely out of context. It was enough to have taken the time to review the animation in Ayvri, and see that I was not "thermalizing" inside the clouds as usually happens when there is really malicious flight in clouds (you see the pilot who continues to thermal in the same ascent as the others. And even if after that they wanted to insist on sanctioning me to make sure I stayed not just out of the clouds, but out of them.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Sat, May 7 2022, 11:29:32 am MDT

Day six, canceled

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

Morning Soaring Forecast for Saturday, May 7th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 8am. Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 87°F. Windy, with a west wind 10 to 15 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 25 mph. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

The sky is clear at sunrise with the clouds having gone further south.

Hourly morning and afternoon forecast: southwest wind at 7 am, 9 mph (actually there is no wind), 14 mph west-southwest at 10 am with gusting to 18 mph, at 1 pm, 17 mph west gusting to 23 mph, at 4 pm, west 18 mph gusting to 25 mph, afternoon cloud cover 29% decreasing to 13%, afternoon chance of rain 17% decreasing to 10%.

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: west slightly southwest 17 mph (24 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 520 fpm
TOL: 5,900'
CB: none
B/S: 3.4

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: west-southwest 16 mph (22 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 380 fpm
TOL: 4,300'
CB: none
B/S: 1.9

CAPE shows high chance of over development in the morning (9 am to 10 am) decreasing in the afternoon. This is contradicted by the clear sky that we see this morning.

What the sky looked like near noon:

We are north of the big cloud. There were plenty of cu's. The wind was strong out of the west. The task was the same as the day before (see above).

The winds recorded at Leesburg airfield at 10 are 13 mph gusting to 22 mph, and at 11 are 10 mpg gusting to 23 mph.

The final results are found here:

https://OzReport.com/26.68#1

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Fri, May 6 2022, 3:28:09 pm MDT

Day five, canceled

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

The forecast for strong gusts, tight landing areas, no cu's were causes for canceling the task.

Morning Soaring Forecast for Friday, May 6th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

Sunny, with a high near 93°F. Light west-southwest wind increasing to 10 to 15 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 25 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: southwest wind 13 mph increasing to 17 mph gusting to 24 mph, cloud cover 17%, no chance of rain.

RAP, Noon:

Surface wind: southwest 11 mph (14 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 560 fpm
TOL: 4,400'
CB: none
B/S: 4.1

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: southwest 13 mph (21 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 600 fpm
TOL: 5,400'
CB: none
B/S: 4.2

CAPE shows very little chance of over development here or in the neighborhood but likely on the coasts.

SkewT shows slight chance of cu-nimb here.

58°F at CB.

The task:

Wilotree 10 km
Midflo 3 km
Zimmrr 400 m.

71 km

This is what the sky looked like this afternoon:

The winds at Leesburg Airfield:

06 15:53 SW 14 G 21
06 14:53 S 14 G 22
06 13:53 S 12

The task would have taken us over areas with few landing fields and lots of housing, trees, and wet lands. All the models showed 20-26 mph gusts along the course line with steady winds 13-15 mph all day long. If the winds had been out of the south, southeast, or north, that would likely have been doable.

Very Preliminary Soaring Forecast for Saturday, May 7th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS:

A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 2pm. Mostly cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing, with a high near 87°F. Windy, with a west wind 10 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

Hourly morning and afternoon forecast: west-southwest wind at 10 am, 15 mph gusting to 21 mph, at 1 pm, 18 mph gusting to 25 mph, at 4 pm, 20 mph gusting to 28 mph, afternoon cloud cover 19% decreasing to 9%, afternoon chance of rain 15%.

HRRR, 1 pm (surface temperature forecasted is 2°F lower than NWS forecast at 1 pm):

Surface wind: west slightly southwest 14 mph (25 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 0 fpm
TOL: 0'
CB: none
B/S: 0.0

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: west slightly southwest 17 mph (29 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 0 fpm
TOL: 0'
CB: none
B/S: 0.0

CAPE shows high chance of over development (2,300 J/kg).

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Thu, May 5 2022, 8:11:23 pm MDT

Day four, results

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

https://airtribune.com/2022-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Total
1 Konrad Heilmann BRA Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 02:05:08 910.3
2 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 01:52:14 905.8
3 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 01:52:24 898.2
4 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 02:11:44 849.8
5 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 02:11:54 818.0
6 James Messina USA Aeros Combat 13.5 02:21:51 678.7
7 Raul Guerra ECU Icaro Moyes RX 02:40:26 669.6
8 Fabiano Nahoum BRA Icaro Laminar 14.1 02:39:52 659.9
9 Rich Reinauer USA Wills Wing T3C 02:47:48 616.9
10 JD Guillemette USA Tbd Tbd 02:52:38 594.2

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 823.1 651.3 884.0 905.8 3264
2 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 984.3 574.8 800.0 849.8 3209
3 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 857.4 534.8 872.1 818.0 3082
4 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 765.7 603.5 686.8 898.2 2954
5 Mick Howard USA Moyes RX 3.5 841.8 369.1 785.3 253.3 2250
6 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 710.5 650.0 643.6 229.6 2234
7 Raul Guerra ECU Icaro Moyes RX 558.4 152.3 837.4 669.6 2218
8 James Messina USA Aeros Combat 13.5 672.7 509.0 333.8 678.7 2194
9 Konrad Heilmann BRA Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 Technora 782.4 50.8 375.2 910.3 2119
10 Peter Kelley USA Icaro Laminar 13.2 408.9 469.1 827.0 409.4 2114

Sport task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Total
1 Dean Funk M USA Moyes Gecko Pro 02:36:14 929.3
1 Tim Delaney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 02:49:30 929.3
3 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 03:41:30 653.0
4 Jon Irlbeck M USA Wills Wing U2 160 03:51:59 609.0

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Tim Delaney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 933.1 48.8 377.7 929.3 2289
2 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 704.3 30.2 879.2 653.0 2267
3 Dean Funk M USA Moyes Gecko Pro 550.2 59.1 559.9 929.3 2099
4 Leonardo Ortiz M COL Aeros Discus 996.9 59.2 634.3 272.6 1963
5 John Maloney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 155 831.4 30.1 559.1 215.4 1636

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Thu, May 5 2022, 8:10:20 pm MDT

Day four, light winds and cu's

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

Morning Soaring Forecast for Thursday, May 8th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

Patchy fog before 8am. Otherwise, sunny, with a high near 94°F. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: northwest wind 2 mph, cloud cover 19% increasing to 27% by 4 pm, 20% chance of rain after 5 pm

RAP, 1 PM:

Surface wind: west-southwest 3 mph (3 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 620 fpm
TOL: 6,200'
CB: 5,700'
B/S: 10.0 (all models shows 10.0)

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: 4 mph west-southwest (5 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 660 fpm
TOL: 6,400'
CB: none (all the other models show cu's)
B/S: 10.0 (all models shows 10.0)

CAPE shows little chance of over development here or in the neighborhood.

SkewT show reduced chance of cu-nimb here.

53°F at CB.

The task:

Wilotree 8 km
Cheryl 1 km
Panolk 3 km
Cheryl 5 km
Baron 8 km
Wilotree 400m

78.7 km

We launched at 1 PM and I was off fourth behind a 583 powered tug with April at the controls. We are launching from the southeast corner with a west wind at about 3 to 5 mph. The first part of the launch went well and I came off the cart at the right speed and get right behind her without any issues. Then as we passed the slot for the east west runway I was thrown hard and up to the right. I was now way high on her as I got the hang glider back level. Thankfully she didn't release me and I was able to let her climbed up to me. The rest of the tow was without incident.

I was able to climb to 5,100' at cloud base before heading to the northwest with a dozen other pilots. I like being able to go over to Mascotte and stay inside the start cylinder, which gives us plenty of area to find lift. None the less we crowded up right against the edge of the start cylinder.

Pedro and I took off first from a light thermal just outside the start cylinder and headed into the blue hole going to the west-northwest toward Center Hill. Just north of the northwest corner of the nursery I found 15 fpm and Pedro joined me along with a few others that caught up with us for a few turns.

Finding this thermal to be ridiculous I made the decision to head for the cu to the southwest, west of the nursery. At almost the same time Pedro decided to head west. I don't know what he saw over there, but it looked blue to me.

I entered the thermal at 2,700' and climbed at an average of 99 fpm. I saw the pilots who instead of heading west-northwest headed west and they were about 2,000' over me just under the cu. Konrado, who would win the day, was among them. Plateauing at 3,200' I lost patience and headed north toward some small cu's.

Pedro was still gliding and soon was down to 700' AGL when he found a 245 fpm climb to 3,200' before heading on to the next thermal.

I came in under cu after cu but did not find enough lift to sustain a climb throughout a single turn. There were a couple of better looking cu's a bit to my west that I likely should have tried, but they were over a treed area and I was down to 2,000'. Finally I had to land just east of Center Hill.

I thought that I made the rational choice to head for the cu but it didn't work out. Pedro found the good lift from low.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Wed, May 4 2022, 7:53:40 pm MDT

Day three, looks like a much better day

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Wednesday, May 4th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 91°F. Calm wind becoming east around 5 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east wind 3 mph at 1 pm turning to 5 mph northeast at 3 pm, cloud cover 30% increasing to 39% by 4 pm, chance of rain, 7% before 2 pm, then 33% until 4 pm, then 39%.

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: north 2 mph (4 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 640 fpm
TOL: 6,700'
CB: 5,900'
B/S: 10.0

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: north 6 mph (7 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 620 fpm
TOL: 7,900'
CB: 7,700'
B/S: 10.0

CAPE shows some chance of over development here or in the neighborhood but very likely on the coasts.

SkewT doesn't show cu-nimbs

47°F at CB.

We didn't get any rain during the day, but a few exploded cu-mimbs on the west coast brought a bit of shade.

The task:

Wilotree 5 km
Fantsy 5km
DSROK 5 km
T47433 2 km
Wilotree 400 m

77 km

We launched at 1:10 PM after the Sport Class launch and started at 2 PM.

I asked everyone who saw it about my launch from the previous day and other than folks being amazed that I didn't kill myself I didn't get much help about what to do to avoid the problem. Then just before launch Mick Howard said that my back cradle was too low. He had tried "my" cart and disliked it. He wanted me to get on a different cart with a higher back cradle and therefore a shallower angle of attack.

I have been using this cart in this position (it's fixed) for two years, but it is only this year that I've run into this problem of the left wing dipping. It is clearly the case that the left wing is stalled or not flying while the right wing rises up. The issue was why, when this didn't happen before and now only with the 583 powered tugs, like Bobby's.

I towed behind Jim Prahl in a 914 powered tug today with the back cradle up. It all went smoothly like it is supposed to. I think what is going on is that I slightly changed my launched procedure this year. Instead of pulling in over the base bar with one tube held in my left arm and getting the protow release in front of the base bar, and then grabbing the other tube with my right hand, I have been grabbing both tubes and rocking up to get the release above the base tube. I likely haven't been pulling enough forward to get the stinger out of the cradle and launch angle reduced to where it would be if I had the higher back cradle.

So tomorrow I will go ahead and tow behind whoever comes to tow me with the adjusted cart with the higher back cradle.

I was the first to tow in the open class after one early bird and I quickly found 300 fpm to cloud base at 4,500' right over Wilotree Park. So the game of keeping out of the cloud commenced. I happily flew to a cu to the southeast to get up to 5,000' and just stay on the edge of the cu. at the edge of start cylinder.

I lost a few hundred feet getting the start time by getting back into the start cylinder and then getting to the first cu down the course line put me down to 3,400' south of Lake Erie and in a weak thermal up to 4,100'. Heading south I found 500 fpm to 4,800', now things were looking good, but half a dozen pilots were out in front and couldn't be seen. I was already just east of the Seminole Lake Glider Port and had a 5 mph north tail wind.

The next thermal was south of 474 and 33 and averaged 430 fpm to 5,100.' Derrick Turner and I were scorching the task hitting strong lift after the initial weak stuff. We flew over the sport class pilots who were bunched up low south of 474. The as we approached Dean Still there were half a dozen pilot low well below us heading south toward the Fantasy of Flight turnpoint. Whoa, we were high above the leading guys.

The lift over them was a weak 150 fpm, but there was no need to rush ahead. We climbed to 4,100' then I headed out with Daniel Velez to get the turnpoint. We turned around and headed back north to get under the next cu, but it was only 170 fpm to 4,100'. Daniel left but I didn't see him go. I headed on my own west to a cu but it was only 130 fpm to 3,300'.

Again on my own I headed north back toward Dean Still road and toward the 5 km turnpoint cylinder around Dean Still and Rockridge. I found 200 fpm just south of Dean Still, but still was only able to climb to 3,300'.

Inside the turnpoint cylinder heading toward cu's over the Famish turnpoint I was down to 1,600'. I worked 76 fpm to 2,000' and then went looking for better lift. I went searching all over looking for lift under cu's. I was in the cylinder for twenty minutes and down to 1,100' AGL over the Green Swamp I found 233 fpm that got me to 4,000' and on my way again.

It was almost 4 PM.

I headed into the Green Swamp to get under a good locking cu and got up at 230 fpm to 4,600'. Heading east-southeast to the next cu got me 250 fpm to 5,000'. These cu's were over sunlit fields. There was now shade to the north caused by the outpouring from a cu-nimb far to the west.

Fortunately there were cu's over the shaded ground as the cloud above wasn't that thick and I climbed to 4,600' after tagging the turnpoint at 474 and 33. There were plenty of cu's ahead and the shading was disappearing. I stopped for 200 fpm lift 11 km out from goal and came in with plenty of altitude.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Wed, May 4 2022, 7:52:24 pm MDT

Day three, results

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

https://airtribune.com/2022-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Total
1 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 02:21:50 884.0
2 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 02:22:59 872.1
3 Raul Guerra ECU Icaro Moyes RX 02:20:14 837.4
4 Peter Kelley USA Icaro Laminar 13.2 02:34:23 827.0
5 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 02:09:31 800.0
6 Mick Howard USA Moyes RX 3.5 02:22:45 785.3
7 Davis Straub USA Wills Wing T3 144 02:53:42 715.7
8 Miguel Molina PRI Aeros Combat C 13.5 02:56:16 697.4
9 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 03:00:23 686.8
10 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 03:10:00 643.6

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 984.3 574.8 800.0 2359
2 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 823.1 651.3 884.0 2358
3 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 857.4 534.8 872.1 2264
4 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 765.7 603.5 686.8 2056
5 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 710.5 650.0 643.6 2004
6 Mick Howard USA Moyes RX 3.5 841.8 369.1 785.3 1996
7 Davis Straub USA Wills Wing T3 144 628.3 529.1 715.7 1873
8 Rob Cooper USA Wills Wing T2 393.2 806.0 642.1 1841
9 Peter Kelley USA Icaro Laminar 13.2 408.9 469.1 827.0 1705
10 Raul Guerra ECU Icaro Moyes RX 558.4 152.3 837.4 1548

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Tue, May 3 2022, 6:20:26 pm MDT

Day two, would we be able to have a task at all?

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 89°F. Southeast wind around 5 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: southeast wind 7 mph, cloud cover 50% increasing to 60% by 4 pm, chance of rain 4% before 2 pm, then 34% until 4 pm, then 51%.

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: southeast 7 mph (8 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 600 fpm
TOL: 6,100'
CB: 5,300'
B/S: 10.0

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east-southeast 4 mph (4 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 580 fpm
TOL: 6,600'
CB: 6,100'
B/S: 10.0

CAPE shows some chance of over development here or in the neighborhood but very likely on the coasts.

SkewT shows cu-nimbs don't develop if the high is 86°F.

50°F at CB.

There was a forecast for rain at Wilotree at 6 PM (didn't happen)

We woke up to a completely covered sky, thick gray clouds every where. It didn't look like that there would be any lift any where later.

The NWS hourly forecast (see above) showed at least 50% cloud cover all day and it was already 100%.

None the less the task committee came up with a task, the reverse of the Monday task with a few modifications to the size of the turnpoint cylinders.

Wilotree 8 km
Baron 4 km
Kokee 2 km
Wilotree 400 m

82 km

This task allowed us to stay in the area where there would be the least likelihood of over development and rain.

But there was a lot of doubt about whether that could happen. The Sport Class launched first at 12:40 pm and for the most part they were able to stick, but the conditions still looked very weak as the ground was completely shaded. We postponed the open launch for half an hour to 1:30 PM.

At ten minutes before the open launch the task committee decided to remove Baron from the turnpoints in the task, so it would be to Kokee and back, a 58 km task.

A bunch of open class pilots chose to launch later in the line so I was off early. Almost killed again towing behind Bobby Bailey. The glider went off to the left very hard right away. I held on even harder to the cart as I thought I was going to crash hard, but then realized that the cart was underneath me. The glider whipped around and I dropped the cart when I realized that I was flying. I'm so glad that I've trained myself to hold onto that cart no matter what.

I'm going behind Jim Prahl or Kacey from now on. I don't need to be this brave. The left wing never dips behind the powerful tugs.

There was a thermal right over the launch and of course Bobby wound his tug up tight, which is always a thrill, yet another one apparently, but I held on on the outside and despite the fact that we were in lift I wasn't going to let go until 2,000' AGL, the tow height limit for the competition.

Since we were already turning tight in a thermal I just continued climbing to cloud base at 3,800' and started playing the keep out of the mists game with Pedro Garcia and a few other pilots for about ten minutes with almost half an hour to go until the start window opened. As the lift died we chose to go to the northwest near the edge of the 8 km start cylinder. It it so much nicer to have this additional room when you've got to find the sparse lift.

The lift over Mascotte was weak and soon gave out. I headed for a brown field that had been cleared for development to the east. Other pilots went to the fire over a cleared area to the southeast. Raul followed me to the east.

The lift was great and we were soon back at cloud base. Later Maria would come in under us. The pilots at the fire did well, but their lift stopped at about 5 minutes before the start gate.

Raul and I stayed high (3,800'-4,000') at cloud base as we drifted slowly toward the edge of the start cylinder. We had such a poor start on Monday, it was super great to have a superior start on Tuesday.

I headed west north of the nursery while Raul headed west a bit to my south over the nursery. It looked really dark on the ground in that direction from all the shade from the cu's further to the south. I was heading for more sunlit areas spotted with cu's.

I found some weak lift back to 3,600' and then headed west without seeing Raul again. Down to 1,100' AGL after a 7 km glide over open and sunlit pastures I found 400 fpm that averaged 330 fpm to the top at 3,900'. I saw the pilots from the fire coming toward the two of us turning in a very tight thermal with our wing tips way up. One pilot came in at my altitude and I just said to myself that he had better be prepared to put it up on a wing tip. Fortunately he was and we climbed together rapidly drifting at 9 mph to the west.

It was ten kilometers to the turnpoint and I didn't find much lift under the cu's on the way there. Just before I nicked the turnpoint I felt a little bit of lift that I flew through, but then went back to. I could have easily been the first one to make it to the turnpoint. The pilot I had circled up with came a bit later then Daniel, and then later half a dozen other pilots as the lift continued to be very weak. There were patches of sunlit ground around but mostly the ground was shaded.

It took almost twenty minutes to dig my way out of this area drifting further west to I75 and climbing to 4,100'. The six or eight pilots headed east toward Webster looking for the cu's over sunlit ground. They showed me 340 fpm and I climbed to 3,900', but I should have just kept climbing, but I didn't know that this far out from Wilotree we would be climbing in our last thermal. Other pilots climbed to over 4,000' and went in search of the next thermal, but would not be there.

I flew east until down to 1,400' at the edge of a small treed area with the mine just on the other side I decided to turn back and check out possible lift back to the west. Nothing there so I landed in a nice big field.

Pedro and Maria landed within half a kilometer of my furthest east point.

Rob Cooper, flying in his second competition (after his first at the Paradise Airsports Nationals), didn't follow the crowd and made it to goal.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Tue, May 3 2022, 5:44:53 pm MDT

Day two, results

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

https://airtribune.com/2022-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Distance Total
1 Rob Cooper USA Wills Wing T2 02:02:54 56.49 750.4
2 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 49.39 604.9
3 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 48.38 603.7
4 JD Guillemette USA TBD 48.84 600.6
5 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 45.23 559.9
6 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 42.89 532.8
7 Miguel Molina PRI Aeros Combat C 13.5 42.84 526.7
8 Ric Caylor USA Moyes RX 5 Pro 41.90 511.0
9 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 40.35 493.3
10 Davis Straub USA Wills Wing T3 144 40.09 488.0

Cumulative

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 Total
1 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 984.3 532.8 1517
2 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 823.1 604.9 1428
3 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 857.4 493.3 1351
4 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 765.7 559.9 1326
5 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 710.5 603.7 1314
6 Mick Howard USA Moyes RX 3.5 841.8 355.1 1197
7 Rob Cooper USA Wills Wing T2 393.2 750.4 1144
8 Derreck Turner USA Moyes RX 4 869.9 266.2 1136
9 Davis Straub USA Wills Wing T3 144 628.3 488.0 1116
10 JD Guillemette USA TBD 467.5 600.6 1068

Sport task:

# Name Nat Glider Distance Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz COL Aeros Discus 10.54 59.2
2 Dean Funk USA Moyes Gecko Pro 10.50 59.1
3 Tim Delaney USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 8.24 48.8
4 Attila Plasch USA Wills Wing U2 7.62 45.7
5 Douglas Hale USA ? Gecko 155 6.35 39.1

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz M COL Aeros Discus 996.9 59.2 1056
2 Tim Delaney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 933.1 48.8 982
3 John Maloney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 155 831.4 30.1 862
4 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 704.3 30.2 735
5 Dean Funk M USA Moyes Gecko Pro 550.2 59.1 609

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Mon, May 2 2022, 7:17:37 pm MDT

Day one, results

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

https://airtribune.com/2022-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Total
1 Daniel Velez COL Wills Wing T3 01:48:24 984.3
2 Derreck Turner USA Moyes RX 4 02:00:14 869.9
3 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 02:00:56 857.4
4 Mick Howard USA Moyes RX 3.5 02:03:10 841.8
5 Robin Hamilton USA Aeros Combat 01:55:10 823.1
6 Konrad Heilmann BRA Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 02:10:05 782.4
7 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 02:03:05 765.7
8 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 02:08:59 710.5
9 James Messina USA Aeros Combat 13.5 02:24:16 672.7
10 Fabiano Nahoum BRA Icaro Laminar 14.1 02:18:23 644.9

Sport task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz M COL Aeros Discus 01:18:57 996.8
2 Tim Delaney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 01:23:38 931.7
3 John Maloney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 155 01:33:32 830.2
4 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 01:40:35 704.6
5 Dean Funk M USA Moyes Gecko Pro 02:03:14 553.1

Sport Class, seven of ten made goal, Open Class, twenty three of twenty nine made goal.

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2022 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Mon, May 2 2022, 6:56:16 pm MDT

Day one, trying for 30% in goal

Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Monday, May 2nd, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today

A 10 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm. Sunny, with a high near 89°F. East wind around 5 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east-southeast wind 6 increasing to 8 mph mph, cloud cover 21% increasing to 33%, chance of rain. 10% at 2 pm, 18% at 5 pm.

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: east-southeast 4 mph (5 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 620 fpm
TOL: 6,100'
CB: 5,700'
B/S: 10.0

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: southeast 2 mph (3 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 680 fpm
TOL: 8,500'
CB: 7,200'
B/S: 10.0

CAPE shows little chance of over development here or in the neighborhood.

47°F at CB.

Task:

Wilotree 5 km
Kokee 4 km
Baron 5 km
Wilotree 400m

77 km FAI triangle.

Kacey pulls me upwind to the east but not as far as the forming cu. I continue flying toward it 3 km east of Wilotree Park, but don't find anything and have to come back downwind to find another cu much closer to Wilotree and at 1,200' start turning. This thermal averages almost 300 fpm to 4,100'.

There are lots of good looking cu's a bit to the west by the Mickey Mouse lake and pretty soon we are playing around with each other to stay out of the cloud at 5,000' to 5,400'. This lasts for twenty three minutes until eight minutes before the start gate opens.

As the lift begins to die I make a crucial error and head back a kilometer to get under a cu north of Mickey Mouse while other pilots will stick with the dying cu. This will put me 1000' below everyone else at the edge of the start cylinder at the start time.

We all head west-northwest toward the eastern edge of the Green Swamp south of highway 50 and west-southwest of the nursery. There is a nice looking cu there and it has been a good spot of lift before but I'm also looking at the cu on the southeast corner of the nursery, almost always an area of strong lift. I decide, unfortunately, to continue west just south of that cu.

When we get under the cu to the west it's weak, really weak. The pilots that are high continue onward to the west. At first it's 77 fpm, then moving over it's 150 fpm to 3,800'. I've soon had enough flying with Raul and head northwest to find 200+ fpm to 5,400'. It sure would have been nice to find stronger lift.

I take the turnpoint with a few pilots behind as I left my gaggle and then flying to cu's to the northeast I get down to 1,400' before I find 340 fpm back to near cloud base at 5,000'. I'm at the southwest corner of the forested area and heading out over it I find again weak lift at less than 200 fpm. It's a slow climb to 5,200'. I'm hearing from Pedro, but he is always 6 km ahead and finding better lift.

This lack of strong lift continues as I go from cu to cu to the northeast to the turnpoint at Baron. Finally I find 350 fpm in the blue and then head southeast along the Florida Turnpike to the next good looking cu. It's not bad at 240 fpm, but I leave early at 4,400' for better looking ones further south and find 340 fpm to 5,200'.

It's 11:1 to goal, but I figure that at 15 km out I will likely not glide at 11:1 so that I might have to take some lift at the chicken coops north of Mascotte. I come over to them take a couple of turns and then see three pilots just to the north of me climbing fast. I go over to them and it's 700+ fpm . Where was this stuff much earlier in the flight. Now the point is to climb as high and as fast as possible so that I can flying into goal at 55 mph.

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Sun, May 1 2022, 6:26:15 pm MDT

The podium

Fabiano Nahoum|John Simon|Larry Bunner|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

#1 Larry Bunner (center), #2 John Simon (left), #3 Fabiano Nahoum (right)

Larry, middle; John, on his right; Fabiano on his left.

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Sun, May 1 2022, 6:07:28 pm MDT

A bit of a disappointment

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Not everyone was disappointed, of course.

The forecast for the day:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Saturday, April 30th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2pm, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm between 2pm and 5pm, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 85°F. East wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east wind 9-11 mph, cloud cover 66% increasing to 70%, chance of rain 23% increasing to 56% at 2 pm

RAP 13, 1 PM:

Surface wind: east-southeast 8 mph (11 mph 2,000') gust 10 mph
Updraft velocity: 620 fpm
TOL: 5,600'
Cu: 3,100'
B/S: 8.7

RAP 13, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east 8 mph (11 mph 2,000') gust 11 mph
Updraft velocity: 540 fpm
TOL: 5,700'
Cu: 5,400''
B/S: 7.8

CAPE shows little chance of over development here and to our north and northwest, but good chance to our south and southwest.

Area of no lift north of Williston.

SkewT shows no cu-nimb development here as the high temperature is only 80°F.

It turned out that we did get thunder storms and rain, but only after 7:30 pm. Some pilots experienced a few rain drops while on course.

We were back down at the west end for a launch into the east wind yet again. The sky didn't look all that great, more like the previous day when we had very disappointing lift. None the less there were in fact better conditions.

Bobby Bailey towed me up again, so far every time. The lift was weak but definitely there at about 120 fpm, much better than the day before. Slowly climbing drifting to the west at 9 mph I found 250 fpm and got up to cloud base between 4,000' and 4,300'. I played keep out of the cloud for 15 minutes as we drifted to the edge of the 5 km start cylinder (why didn't we set it to 8 km?).

Unfortunately, we still had 15 minutes to wait for the first clock. Larry suggested flying to a cu to the northeast inside the start cylinder. I followed him a ways to his east as we headed for the cu. Down from 4,300' to 3,100' I found 160 fpm and Larry came over under me. I was able to only climb to 3,700' before it stopped. We still had seven minutes and were at the edge of the start cylinder.

I headed west back toward the launch. The lift on the southeast corner of Wilotree Park didn't work well enough and I was forced to land and relaunch.

Jim Prahl towed me to the north and after pinning off I headed straight downwind to landable patch of cleared area where I found 200 fpm at 1,300' AGL. Larry came in about 100' over me and then as we got up Konrado came in under us. We were able to climb to 3,000' and take the second clock.

I found 100 fpm over the southeast corner of the nursery and then 225 fpm over the southwest corner to 3,900' where I joined up with four or more pilots flying the Sport Class task.

I heard from Larry that he was getting up at 300 fpm by Center Hill 7 km to the north and despite not being that high went for the good looking clouds in that direction. Down to 1,300' AGL I found almost 300 fpm to 3,900' drifting at 10 mph to the west south of Center Hill.

On the west side of Center Hill there were Thaise and Leonardo turning at my level and I climbed up to 4,100' with one turn before heading for the first turnpoint at Cheryl.

The ground was almost completely shaded from west of Center Hill to well past the turnpoint. I got the turnpoint at 2,000' and headed north to get under a dark cloud. I then saw Konrado turning just a little higher than me. I went under him but found 4 fpm. There were two fires just to the west. I should have stayed with Konrado as he got up and so did Thaise who later came under him also.

I tried the fires and they didn't work, so I tried other fields with no luck.

Larry got up at the turnpoint and headed east, but for him and Konrado it was just a long glide to landing east of the forested area that is north of Center Hill.

It was a crucial error to leave Konrado and not work further under the dark cu and to go for the fires. If I had stayed with Konrado I would have had a great opportunity to stay in third place.

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Sun, May 1 2022, 8:30:57 am MDT

The big picture

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Larry Bunner won the 2022 Paradise Airports Nationals (one of a series of three competitions that determine the 2022 National Championship) by a very significant margin. He could not be happier (except maybe when attending one of many graduation ceremonies for his grandchildren, which he'll be doing this week).

How did it go?

On the first day we had a long out task (186 kilometers) to the north-northwest in an east-southeast wind. Larry, John Simon, and I were the last pilots still in the air and the furthest out at 6:30 pm. Larry chose to head for the last cu in the semi convergence to the north on the west side of High Springs. Getting that last cu allowed him to go just a bit further than John or I.

On the second day, the giant task around the Green Swamp, John Simon won the day, but Larry was close to goal (a little less than 7 km short) in fourth and now behind John by 164 points.

Larry won the task on day 3, a triangle to the northwest, by making up for a low altitude start (thereby staying out of a lead gaggle), taking a different route after the first turnpoint at Kokee getting north of the spreading cu that put the leading gaggle, including John Simon, on the ground just after the first turnpoint. That put him over 300 point ahead of John.

On day five, after a cancelled day, we had an extremely weak day. Larry chose to launch at the end of the staging line instead of ninth. There were numerous relights and a number of them after 4 PM (including John Simon). Larry asked his tug pilot to take him almost straight south past the spread out cu that was shading Wilotree. He found 300 fpm west of Pine Island Lake to cloud base at 4,500', while everyone else struggled and more likely landed.

Pedro Garcia was able to fly the longest distance, but jumped the gun as he launched near the front and was blown out of the 8 km cylinder. Larry was able to find good lift going to the first turnpoint and made three turnpoints to get first for the day on a day worth only 200 points, and only about 125 points than those you didn't get out side the 5 km minimum distance cylinder. He was now a little less than 400 points in front of John, which is a fairly comfortable amount.

On day five it was unclear if we would have safe flying conditions given the high chance for rain, and we called a local triangle in the area with the least chance of rain according to a couple of the models. Larry was way down at 12th for that day, but John Simon was close by ending up 9th. Pedro won the day after a relight.

So with three wins and a fourth he was able to end up a little over 300 points ahead of John. Being in position to catch John after the first two days, his decision to take an alternative route around the shaded area on day three (and be forced by circumstances to start way behind the lead gaggle) was the key to victory. He gains a few more points on the 200 point day, so that going into the last day meant not necessarily winning the day, but not losing the competition to John.

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Sun, May 1 2022, 7:35:11 am MDT

Results from the last day, day six, task five

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Results:

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 56.12 691.8
2 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 51.94 652.1
3 Ric Caylor Moyes RX 5 Pro 48.48 624.5
4 Raul Guerra Icaro Moyes RX 45.21 591.4
5 Rob Cooper Wills Wing T4 45.45 590.2
6 JD Guillemette TBD 42.53 555.9
7 Rich Reinauer Wills Wing T3C 42.16 551.2
8 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 41.40 538.5
9 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 41.71 536.6
10 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 40.86 527.4

Final

# Name Nat Glider Total
1 Larry Bunner USA Wills Wing T3 144 Team 3323
2 John Simon USA Aeros Combat C 12.7 2986
3 Fabiano Nahoum BRA Icaro Laminar 14.1 2749
4 Pedro L. Garcia USA Wills Wing T3 144 2728
5 Luke Waters USA Moyes RX 3.5 2681
6 Giovani Tagliari BRA Aeros Combat C 13.5 2603
7 Davis Straub USA Wills Wing T3 144 2546
8 Rich Reinauer USA Wills Wing T3C 2534
9 Mike Glennon COL Moyes SX 5 2389
10 Marcello Pereira BRA Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 2174

Sport task:

# Name Nat Glider Time Distance Total
1 Attila Plasch M USA Wills Wing U2 01:19:42 39.24 991.3
2 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 01:18:58 39.24 853.6
3 Leonardo Ortiz M COL Aeros Discus 01:26:16 39.24 809.7
4 Douglas Hale M USA ? Gecko 155 20.42 372.7
5 Richard Milla M USA Wills Wing U2 145 18.10 323.2

Final:

# Name Nat Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 T 5 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz M COL Aeros Discus 991.8 859.3 801.1 331.7 809.7 3794
2 Thaise Caroline Galvan F BRA Moyes Gecko 388.9 857.8 282.7 232.2 853.6 2615
3 Richard Milla M USA Wills Wing U2 145 756.7 717.0 716.5 98.2 323.2 2612
4 Attila Plasch M USA Wills Wing U2 115.3 325.9 270.3 218.9 991.3 1922
5 Tim Delaney M USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135 566.4 905.9 430.2 0.0 0.0 1903

https://fb.watch/cL6leG3tdx/

https://fb.watch/cL6D847gFM/

https://fb.watch/cL6GHm4uLa/

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Fri, Apr 29 2022, 9:43:30 pm MDT

A strange day five

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Friday, April 29th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

Mostly sunny, with a high near 85°F. East wind 5 to 15 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east wind 11-14 mph with gusts to 18 mph not starting until 4 pm, cloud cover 36% increasing to 46%, no chance of rain.

Model surface wind and gust forecasts for 1 PM:

GFS 10 mph, east slightly northeast
ICON 9 mph east, 25 mph
NAM 12 12 mph east
NAM 3 13 mph east, 14 mph
RAP 10 mph east, 13 mph
HRRR 10 mph east-northeast, 13 mph
NWS 13 mph east, none

The forecasted surface winds and gusts are somewhat lower than those forecasted for Thursday. Surface wind at Leesburg airport is 9 mph at 8 am, yesterday it was 13 mph.

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: east-northeast 10 mph (13 mph 2,000') gust 13 mph
Updraft velocity: 600 fpm
TOL: 6,400'
Cu: 6,200'
B/S: 8.1

HRRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east-northeast 11 mph (13 mph 2,000') gust 14 mph
Updraft velocity: 600 fpm
TOL: 6.900'
Cu: 6,900''
B/S: 9.1

The Sport Class chose to go first at 12:40 PM. Nobody stuck. They tried again, a few stuck and some came back for a third try then a few would later try a fourth or fifth time.

Finally the open class pilots got their chance, some stuck, most didn't. I waited at the end of the launch line instead of launching 7th, so got a late start, which was fine. After suffering a broken weak link behind Jim Prahl, I had Bobby Bailey tow me up again and it was fine. I just made sure that I didn't let my left wing dip, as many of the pilots before me did.

There were spread out cu's shading the ground all around. I saw JD circling to the south and heard from Larry that he was thermaling at 300 fpm a few kilometers even further south. I pinned off and went toward JD. For the next ten minutes JD and I circled around with one other pilot gaining 200 feet and losing 200 feet.

Perhaps tired of getting nowhere fast as we drifted in a 14 mph east wind, JD headed off east and the other pilot disappeared. I headed toward some small cu's out over the sunshine instead of the shade that I had been over since launch and found nothing landing just outside the 5 km minimum distance cylinder.

Larry had got up in extremely weak lift and Pedro had been blown out of the 8 km start cylinder and was on his way out ahead of anyone who was still in the air (Raul, Larry and Pedro).

When I got back to Wilotree Park around 4 PM a few of those who had landed back at the park instead of heading out in weak lift, were launching again. John Simon, JD, Ric Caylor, Mick Howard, and Ian Snowball. They were able to make a few kilometers. Eighteen pilots got the minimum distance.

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Fri, Apr 29 2022, 8:38:39 pm MDT

Results, day five, task four

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Results:

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Open task:

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 62.52 200.9
2 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 77.61 166.0
3 JD Guillemette TBD 38.69 158.8
4 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 32.01 144.7
5 Mick Howard Moyes RX 3.5 30.64 140.9
6 Raul Guerra Icaro Moyes RX 20.06 115.1
7 Ian Snowball Moyes RS 4.5 14.37 103.1
8 Ric Caylor Moyes RX 5 Pro 11.51 95.3
9 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 Technora 7.58 84.4
10 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 5.37 77.2

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 917.5 767.3 955.2 200.9 2841
2 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 886.5 962.8 455.0 144.7 2449
3 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 876.3 759.5 557.4 77.2 2270
4 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 690.9 737.3 675.6 76.0 2180
5 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 835.3 621.8 563.4 76.0 2097
6 Marcello Pereira Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 553.0 873.0 568.5 76.0 2071
7 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 769.5 751.6 467.4 76.0 2065
8 Mike Glennon Moyes SX 5 540.1 953.8 467.3 76.0 2037
9 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 833.0 555.3 481.5 166.0 2036
10 Rich Reinauer Wills Wing T3C 726.1 420.9 759.4 76.0 1982

Sport task:

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 24.25 331.7
2 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 14.49 232.2
3 Attila Plasch Wills Wing U2 13.28 218.9
4 Mitch Sorby Wills Wing U2 145 11.39 195.6
5 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 5.00 98.2

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 991.8 859.3 801.1 331.7 2984
2 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 756.7 717.0 716.5 98.2 2288
3 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 566.4 905.9 430.2 0.0 1903
4 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 388.9 857.8 282.7 232.2 1762
5 Artiom Markelov Wills Wing Sport 3 155 206.6 100.4 1000.0 98.2 1405

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Thu, Apr 28 2022, 3:12:33 pm MDT

Day four canceled, too windy

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Morning Soaring Forecast for Thursday, April 28th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

Mostly sunny, with a high near 86°F. East-northeast wind 5 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.

Currently at 8 AM blowing NE 13 mph with no gusts at Leesburg airfield.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east slightly northeast wind 13-14 mph with gusts to 18 mph, cloud cover 35% to 40%, no chance of rain.

Model surface wind and gust forecasts for 1 PM:

GFS 11 mph
ICON 9 mph, 24 mph
NAM 12 15 mph, 10 mph (That's weird)
NAM 3 17 mph, 21 mph
RAP 8 mph, 11 mph
HRRR 13 mph, 18 mph
NWS 13 mph, none

HRRR, 1 PM:

Surface wind: east-northeast 13 mph (18 mph 2,000') gust 18 mph
Updraft velocity: 500 fpm
TOL: 4,800'
Cu: 4,600'
B/S: 3.9

HRR, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east-northeast 16 mph (23 mph 2,000') gust 22 mph
Updraft velocity: 440 fpm
TOL: 4,900'
Cu: 0'
B/S: 2.8

The winds were forecasted to be stronger to our north and much lighter to our south and we in the middle. But the winds were just at the edge of acceptable here at Wilotree Park, so the safety committee called the day.

At Leesburg Airport to our north:

Time Wind
(EDT) (mph)
15:53 NE 15 G 22
14:53 E 17 G 24
13:53 NE 14 G 22
12:53 E 13 G 24
11:53 NE 15 G 24
10:53 NE 16 G 21
9:53 NE 15 G 22
8:53 NE 16 G 23
7:53 NE 13

At Kissimee to our south east:

Time Wind
(EDT) (mph)
15:56 NE 15
14:56 E 17
13:56 E 17 G 21
12:56 NE 15 G 18
11:56 E 14
10:56 NE 13
9:56 NE 10
8:56 NE 13
7:56 NE 6

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Thu, Apr 28 2022, 3:10:26 pm MDT

Flying day three

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

The task to the northwest:

Wilotree 5 km
Kokee 2 km
Baron 3 km
Wilotree 400 m

83.8 km FAI triangle

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Wednesday, April 27th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 5pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 89°F. Calm wind becoming west-northwest around 5 mph in the afternoon.

Hourly afternoon forecast: west-northwest wind 6 mph increasing to 7 mph and turning northwest, cloud cover 66%, 20% chance of rain increasing to 31% at 5 pm.

RAP, 1 PM:

Surface wind: west slightly northwest 5 mph (6 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 640 fpm
TOL: 6,200'
Cu: 5,400'
B/S: 10.0

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: northwest 7 mph (9 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 640 fpm
TOL: 7,100'
Cu: 6,700'
B/S: 10.0

Temperature at CB at 2 PM: 48°F (6,700')

CAPE shows no chance of over development

Noon conditions: Lift: 520 fpm, TOL: 4,100', Cu: 0', surface winds west 5 mph

A front is coming through before 2 pm

Got pulled up behind Bobby's tug again. I'm gonna get killed doing this. No more. Tight circle kept me at the higher speed as I moved out to get outside the spinning.

There were plenty of cu's nearby in the 5 km start cylinder and with the northwest wind pushing us back toward Wilotree I was able to climb to 4,800' at 300+ fpm just before the start window opened. I was 3 km from the edge of the start cylinder but Larry had radioed earlier that he was down to 2,700' at the edge of the cylinder so I wanted to stay with the good clouds and lift. This made me a bit late for the start along with a dozen other pilots.

Climbed back to 4,800' south of Mascotte just outside the start cylinder and headed for south of the nursery south of highway 50 and turned in some 125 fpm before heading west again for a nice cu just south of the intersection of 469 and 50 where I found 385 fpm to 4,500'. I was calling all the lift to Larry who was low and following.

Gliding along south of 50 to the west into a 5 mph head wind I was down to 2,400' just east of the lumber mill at highway 471 when I felt that there was good lift in the sunshine to the south of the cloud I came under. Sure enough I was soon hitting bits of 700 to 800 fpm on the 20 second averager. I called it out to Larry and he came in under at 1,200'.

I left at cloud base at 4,300' and headed for a long northwest to southeast black bottom cloud with sunshine on the southern side. Seemed like a big cu like that would be producing. Six kilometers from the turnpoint at Kokee I found lift that averaged 650 fpm all the way to cloud base with a few pilots coming in underneath me.

Nicked the Kokee turnpoint and headed north east and down to 2,500' before I found 300 fpm to 4,200' drifting east at 8 mph. Larry was still a ways behind me, but I kept up the reports as he worked with a dozen other pilots to head toward the Kokee turnpoint.

Heading east-southeast to get on the sunny southern side of an elongated east to west cu I found lift just north of the town of Webster. It was only about 200 fpm but it got me to 4,600' right near the bottom of the long cu. The pilot above me headed north. I headed under the cu to the east with Fabiano just behind me.

I didn't know it at that point but all the leading gaggle had gone down just to the north of me. Maria radioed that she was climbing to my north a few kilometers under the black cloud while I was just on the southern edge of it.

I didn't find any lift under the cu as I headed for Center Hill. There was more cu's ahead and an open sky away from this cu in a few kilometers just past Center Hill. I came in under a cu but there was no lift. I headed for the next one, but there was also nothing there. I was getting low and Maria radioed that she was landing 15 km from the second turnpoint at Baron.

I was down to 1,200' heading northeast up highway 48 just seeing if my good luck from the first three days would hold out, but it didn't look promising. Larry had heard that Maria had landed and that I was low and he had already made the decision to go a different route than the pilots that he was flying with and went north from Kokee toward Bushnell instead of east toward Webster and the black cu. He wanted to get away from the cu and knew that we had to go north at some point so it might as well be as soon as he got Kokee.

I floated along for quite a while but then down to 300' AGL I needed to make a turn and land on the little dirt road in the field. It was a short walk to the gate. Fabiano landed next to me.

Larry was able to get up at Bushnell while almost everyone else was going down. He now had a sky full of little cu's that he used to get himself to Baron and then south back to Wilotree to win the day.

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Wed, Apr 27 2022, 7:35:52 pm MDT

Results, day three

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Results:

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

The lead gaggle, nine pilots, all went down within 3 km of each other just after the first turnpoint. Larry, following the gaggle that was following me, decided to not follow them or me and turned north south of Bushnell instead of going toward Webster and the black cloud ahead and was able to find nice cu's in the unshaded ground north of that cloud, the cloud that rained on Claudia.

Open task 3:

# Name Glider ES Time Distance Total
1 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 16:19:36 02:49:36 83.41 951.3
2 Rob Cooper Wills Wing T4 17:03:40 03:13:40 83.41 855.0
3 Rich Reinauer Wills Wing T3C 17:46:09 04:16:09 83.41 756.3
4 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 64.13 672.9
5 Marcello Pereira Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 47.59 566.2
6 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 46.90 561.1
7 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 46.12 555.1
8 Claudia Mejia Wills Wing T3 136 42.67 520.2
9 Ric Caylor Moyes RX 5 Pro 42.56 512.6
10 Ian Snowball Moyes RS 4.5 42.31 511.5

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 917.5 767.3 951.3 2636
2 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 886.5 962.8 453.1 2302
3 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 876.3 759.5 555.1 2191
4 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 690.9 737.3 672.9 2101
5 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 835.3 621.8 561.1 2018
6 Marcello Pereira Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 553.0 873.0 566.2 1992
7 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 769.5 751.6 465.4 1987
8 Mike Glennon Moyes SX 5 540.1 953.8 465.5 1959
9 Rich Reinauer Wills Wing T3C 726.1 420.9 756.3 1903
10 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 833.0 555.3 479.5 1868

Sport task 3:

# Name Glider Time Distance Total
1 Artiom Markelov Wills Wing Sport 3 155 01:56:09 49.38 1000.0
2 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 02:20:31 49.38 801.1
3 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 02:36:28 49.38 716.5
4 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 26.12 430.2
5 Douglas Hale ? Gecko 155 23.63 384.8

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 991.8 859.3 801.1 2652
2 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 756.7 717.0 716.5 2190
3 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 566.4 905.9 430.2 1903
4 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 388.9 857.8 282.7 1529
5 Artiom Markelov Wills Wing Sport 3 155 206.6 100.4 1000.0 1307

https://fb.watch/cG18_kqR9-/

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Wed, Apr 27 2022, 7:35:09 pm MDT

The flight, day two, Tuesday

Bobby Bailey|John Simon|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022|XC

The task committee chooses to go around the Green Swamp the long way:

Wilotree 5 km
Panolk 3 km
Clinton 3 km
Fantsy 5 km
Wilotree 400 m

153 km

The forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Tuesday, April 26th, 2022 at Wilotree Park

NWS, Today:

Sunny, with a high near 90. Calm wind becoming north-northeast around 5 mph in the afternoon.

Hourly afternoon forecast: south-southeast 3 mph or less until 11 am then east surface wind 3 mph at noon turning to east-northeast at 1 pm at 3 mph and 5 mph north-northeast at 2 pm, cloud cover 4% increasing to 31%, no chance of rain. If we launch at noon it should be light southeast.

RAP, 1 PM:

Surface wind: north 3 mph (4 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 680 fpm
TOL: 6,400'
Cu: 4,800'
B/S: 10.0

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: north slightly northwest 3 mph (4 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 680 fpm
TOL: 8,000'
Cu: 5,100'
B/S: 10.0

Temperature at CB at 2 PM: 44°F

The launch time got moved back again, but this time because pilots weren't just organized to be ready in time. Launch opened at 12:50 pm with a forty minute window and the start gate opened at 1:30 PM.

Bobby Bailey towed me up, but seriously his plane just does not go fast enough. I need 36 to 40 mph to keep from wandering all over the place. Only when Bobby starts doing tight circles can I push myself to the outside to speed up enough to get the glider under control. Thankfully he is very happy to do tight circles but that doesn't help right after coming off the cart. From now on I'll try to tow behind the tugs with more powerful engines.

The average lift varied between 250 fpm and 325 fpm in the start cylinder and I was able to stick around cloud base at 5,100' before quickly heading out to take the first start time. Once again there was 500+ fpm southeast of the nursery and I was soon at 5,200'.

I headed west-northwest to get under the cu's south of Center Hill. The three pilots in front of me headed north-northwest to cu's straight to the north. When I go under the cu's there was Pedro and the lift was weak. A few turns and we headed north to just south of the mines on the west side of Center Hill where we climbed at almost 500 fpm to 5,400'. I had found the lift first so I was quite a bit higher than Pedro or Larry and had to leave the thermal as I got into the mists. I was in touch with both of them on the radio.

Two strong thermals on the way to Lake Panasoftkee and I was with Pedro and Larry but again quite a bit above them and leaving at cloud base. At 5,600' and 5 km from the turnpoint I went with an Aeros pilot to get the turnpoint with the idea of coming back to the strong lift that we just climbed up in.

When I got back I missed the lift not going far enough east and continued on to the south I found lift on the northeast corner of Bushnell and climbed to 5,900', but Pedro and Larry did find the lift when they came back to the thermal before the first turnpoint and got to cloud base much quicker and got out ahead of me.

It was the sixteen kilometer glide to the north end of the mines where I was limited to 140 fpm to 4,100'. I dove for a black cloud to the south-southwest and got punched out of the sky at 700 fpm down. I chose that direction to avoid the shaded area due south and now I was headed for the sunshine to the southwest of the dark cloud.

Down to 1,800' and way way west of the course line I took 350 fpm to 4,700' and then scooted to the southeast to another good looking cloud at the western edge of the Green Swamp. John Simon, who started 20 minutes later, joined me as we climbed to 4,300'.

Heading into the Green Swamp the cu's didn't work so I bailed for the land fill to the south to find 300 fpm to 5,000'. A little further south-southwest I found 240 fpm to 5,300' just before the turnpoint at the intersection of highway 98 and 471.

260 fpm got me back to 4,200' to the south east toward Rockridge Road and highway 98 intersection. I didn't find anything as I searched around and kept track of where there were landing areas to the east toward the turnpoint at Flights of Fantasy.

Down to 1,100' AGL over a big open area with no roads I noted that there were houses to the south and I could hop the fence to get to one of the roads in the subdivision. I also tried my luck right at the border of the open space and the trees mixed in with the houses.

I found 160 fpm as I noted that there were little wisps forming over me and also to me east a bit. Climbing to 3,100' I moved over to the east a bit to get under the better looking cu's and found 370 fpm that took me to almost 7,000'. I was 10 km out from the turnpoint so went straight for it.

There was a field that was burning right at the northern edge of the 5 km turnpoint at Fantsy and then I noticed that a small high cu was forming upwind (to the east) of the smoke. I was able to get under the cu and climb to 5,500', but not back to 7,000' which would have been very nice.

It was now almost 5:30 pm as I headed north toward the little cu's forming in that direction. There was a dark mass of clouds a bit further to the west and maybe that was convergence as we expected a sea breeze.

I worked some light thermals and then over a forested area by Green Pond road while keeping an eye on possible bail out fields I worked two thermals, one after another, from about the same place, climbing to 6,200' at a little over 200 fpm. Finally at 6:11 pm I headed north toward a set of dark cu's hoping to find just enough to get me into goal.

It was a long glide to just west of the Seminole Lake Gliderport and I was down to 2,500' working 43 fpm. Leaving at 2,700', when I knew it would take about 4,000' to make it to goal, I headed for a fire to the north-northwest as well as to the sunny western side of the dark clouds to the north. Neither worked and I glided until 5 km from goal.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/26.4.2022/16:57

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-national:US

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/3065118

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/league/world/2022/brand:all,cat:2,class:all,xctype:all,club:all

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Tue, Apr 26 2022, 9:29:38 pm MDT

The flight, day one

John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Larry Bunner|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022|Pedro Garcia|Rich Reinauer|XC

The original task was an out and back up and down highway 33 which is the north/south road next to Wilotree Park. We did this because of the RAP forecast for east winds.

Morning Soaring Forecast for Monday, April 25th, 2022 at Wilotree Park:

NWS, Today:

Sunny, with a high near 87. East wind 5 to 10 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east surface wind 9 mph increasing to 11 mph, cloud cover 21% increasing to 30%, no chance of rain

RAP, 1 PM

Surface wind: east 7 mph (10 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 640 fpm
TOL: 6,10'
Cu: 5,100'
B/S: 9.1

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east 7 mph (10 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 680 fpm
TOL: 7,400'
Cu: 6,700'
B/S: 10.0

Temperature at CB at 2 PM - 46°

Suggested Task:

Task committee meeting 9 AM
Pilot briefing 10 AM

Noon conditions: Lift: 580 fpm, TOL: 4,800', Cu: 4,100', surface winds east 7 mph

Launch 12:30 PM

Launch spot west launch area

Task start 1:30 PM

Wilotree 5 km
Fantsy 5 km
Baron 5 km
Wilotree 400 m

125 km

But the launch crew had us setup to launch from the northwest corner because of the surface winds were southeast, then five minutes before the launch opened they moved us south to the west launch area for the forecasted east winds. I had previously viewed a satellite photo showing southeast clouds to the northwest so the task committee had changed the task to send us to the north-northwest first to Dunnellon and then to a small airfield south of Lake City.

We didn't get to launch until 1:20 PM instead of 12:30 PM because of all the moving around. This would make it very difficult to make goal 186 km away given that the start gate would open at 2:20 PM.

I was third to launch and got off tow at 1,300' when my vario showed 1,200 fpm. I climbed to cloud base at 4,600' eighteen minutes after I started my tow and was ready to get on with the task. I would have to wait around for over half an hour before the start gate opened. It seemed like every pilot was in the air including the sport class pilots within half an hour.

After hanging around at cloud base for what seemed like forever I headed to the west to Mascotte, took a few turns in less than 200 fpm drawing in a number of pilots who would stay with that climb and moved to the west to the southeast corner of the nursery to find 500 fpm on average to cloudbase. Rich Reinauer and Konrad were with me. Larry Bunner was nearby.

Heading northwest toward Center Hill I found 500 fpm to cloudbase at 4,800' again after a 7 km glide. It looks like the day would be very strong. After gliding to the northeast of Center Hill and another strong thermal to 5,100'. Leaving at 5,100' the three of us headed for the cu over the cement plant to the west of the prison. We would normally be quite a bit further to the east but the east wind has pushed us west. There was a cu over the prison but it was further away.

It was a twelve kilometer glide and at first the thermal did not work. I was the lowest of the three and was down to 1,100' AGL before I found some lift at 170 fpm. This got me to 2,200' where I could feel a bit safer and I headed west to find better lift as I saw Rich turning. I was able to climb at 200 fpm to 3,800' drifting over highway 301 and almost to I75. Larry Bunner was nearby, but his radio didn't work so I missed the strong thermal that he had that got him up and over the swamp to the east of Lake Panasoftkee.

Way west of our normal route I found 200+ fpm at Coleman to 3,400' and kept creeping north not getting above 4,000' until I got west of I75 north of the intersection with the Florida Turnpike and I75. 400+ fpm got me back to cloud base at 5,400'. Marion Oaks lay ahead.

Southeast of Marion Oaks I climbed again at 400+ fpm to 6,100'. There were lots of thick black-bottomed clouds to the northwest on the southern edge of Marion Oaks, I flew under them but only found 250 fpm for a few turns.

At 5,000' I headed for more cu's to the northwest, but I didn't find anything. I could see pilots high turning in them but when I got to the northwest corner of the big open field west of Marion Oaks, there was no lift and I was down to 2,400'. I headed into the sunshine and the blue to the east then to the south over the open field assuming that I would have to land.

Down to 900' AGL I found lift at the edge of a treed area next to where I had assumed that I would be landing. At 350 fpm I climbed out to 5,500'. This was enough to get me over the trees and houses to the northwest where I spotted some pilots going up fast. Again an average of 500 fpm got me to 6,100' just south of the optimized turnpoint at Dunnell airfield.

There were scattered cu's to the north and it was a 13 km glide to get to the next thermal that averaged 400+ fpm northwest of the Ocala Airport (way high above it and outside the airspace).

I could see that there were a whole lot of lakes/water to the north near the course line and the cu's were to the west (downwind) of the course line, so I went to the northwest to stay under the cu's. Turned out this would have been our normal route anyway.

It was after 5 PM by the time I got to Williston but found 300 fpm average there to 4,900'. The lift to the north was mostly weak. I was surprised to see Pedro coming at me from the north south of Archer. He and John Simon and others had been further east in the blue and they had not been doing well so Pedro and John came west to get under the cu's.

Pedro and I worked together some miserable light lift northwest of Archer and then he got a bit higher and went north. I found some 367 fpm lift a little further to the northwest and climbed back up finally to 5,600'. Pedro was soon landing. John was a ways behind.

A little northwest of Newberry I found a thermal that averaged a little less then 200 fpm. It was getting quite late after 6:30 pm (sundown is at 7:56 pm). I looked up and there was Larry about 100' over me. We climbed to 4,000'.

I headed out first going to the north to the next little wisp, but didn't find anything. There was another cu further north that I didn't go to as it looked like a lot of trees in that direction. Actually it's not that bad.

Larry went to the next cu and got up well. I went to the northeast to land near High Springs. Larry was able to get high enough to cross the river and land north west of High Springs 10 km north west of me.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/25.4.2022/17:25

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-national:US

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/3065117

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/league/world/2022/brand:all,cat:2,class:all,xctype:all,club:all

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Tue, Apr 26 2022, 9:08:00 pm MDT

Results, day two

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Results:

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Day Two Open:

# Name Glider Time Distance Total
1 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 04:29:22 148.34 962.0
2 Mike Glennon Moyes SX 5 04:49:14 148.34 951.5
3 Marcello Pereira Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 05:12:37 148.34 867.0
4 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 141.50 753.9
5 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 143.26 746.1
6 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 139.70 738.6
7 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 141.69 724.1
8 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 139.70 699.8
9 JD Guillemette TBD TBD 127.47 632.5
10 Mick Howard Moyes RX 3.5 127.63 625.3

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 Total
1 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 886.5 962.0 1849
2 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 917.5 753.9 1671
3 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 876.3 746.1 1622
4 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 769.5 738.6 1508
5 Mike Glennon Moyes SX 5 540.1 951.5 1492
6 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 835.3 612.2 1448
7 Marcello Pereira Icaro 2000 Laminar 13.7 553.0 867.0 1420
8 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 690.9 724.1 1415
9 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 833.0 538.2 1371
10 Mick Howard Moyes RX 3.5 681.8 625.3 1307

Day Two Sport:

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 85.15 906.7
2 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 77.55 859.3
3 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 78.72 858.7
4 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 66.32 717.9
5 Dean Funk Moyes Gecko Pro 59.19 619.7

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 991.8 859.3 1851
2 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 756.7 717.9 1475
3 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 566.4 906.7 1473
4 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 388.9 858.7 1248
5 Dean Funk Moyes Gecko Pro 376.8 619.7 997

https://fb.watch/cH88jSU1mV/

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Tue, Apr 26 2022, 6:45:57 pm MDT

Locals rule, day one

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

Results:

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5668/day/open-class

Open class:

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 168.34 917.5
2 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 160.27 886.2
3 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 158.32 875.8
4 Fabiano Nahoum Icaro Laminar 14.1 151.12 834.0
5 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 150.31 831.6
6 Giovani Tagliari Aeros Combat C 13.5 140.66 763.9
7 Rich Reinauer Wills Wing T3C 132.35 717.5
8 Luke Waters Moyes RX 3.5 125.78 679.8
9 Mick Howard Moyes RX 3.5 124.68 671.1
10 Claudia Mejia Wills Wing T3 136 114.84 614.3

Six locals out of the top ten.

Sport:

# Name Glider Time Distance Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Aeros Discus 01:41:59 56.91 991.8
2 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 02:09:50 56.91 756.7
3 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 49.76 566.4
4 Mitch Sorby Wills Wing U2 145 02:31:20 56.91 511.0
5 Thaise Caroline Galvan Moyes Gecko 32.91 388.9

https://fb.watch/cH8J6xd-dJ/

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2022 Paradise Airsports Nationals »

Sun, Apr 24 2022, 6:23:45 pm MDT

Lighter east winds than forecast

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022

After four days of strong east winds, with the skies also full of cu's, we finally have a day with a forecast for lighter east winds, and a reality of even lighter winds, with a sky full of cu's and strong lift. Here's the Sunday, the day before the competition starts, forecast:

Morning Soaring Forecast for Sunday, April 24th, 2022 at Wilotree Park

NWS, Today:

Mostly sunny, with a high near 85. East wind 5 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.

Hourly afternoon forecast: east surface wind 14 mph increasing to 16 mph, gusting to 18 mph increasing to 22 mph, cloud cover 30% decreasing to 25%, no chance of rain

RAP, 1 PM:

Surface wind: east 9 mph (14 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 640 fpm
TOL: 5,400'
Cu: 4,600'
B/S: 6.0

RAP, 4 PM:

Surface wind: east 12 mph (18 mph 2,000')
Updraft velocity: 660 fpm
TOL: 5,700'
Cu: 5,600'
B/S: 5.7

Suggested Task:

Wilotree 3 km
Dunnell 8 km
Williston 1 km

109 km

or

Wilotree 3 km
Turn33 1 km
Wilotree 400 m

40 km

Leesburg Airport (to our north) is reporting variables winds 6 mph at 1 PM. We've got even lighter winds from the east at 2 PM.

Here's what the sky looks like:

We'll see which task pilots attempt.

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Registration Open for Florida Spring Competitions

Thu, Nov 25 2021, 9:47:52 am MST

Finally Airtribune responds

Airtribune|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2022|Stephan Mentler|Wilotree Park Nationals 2022

You can now register for the Florida competitions being run by Stephan Mentler.

https://airtribune.com/2022-paradise-airsports-nationals/pilots

https://airtribune.com/2022-wilotree-park-nationals/pilots

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Tue, Sep 28 2021, 8:50:00 pm MDT

What a great competition

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Almost every one had an extremely fun time flying in Casa Grande last week. Six days out of seven were flown. It was great that we didn't fly the one day that we didn't. Rain on the day after. Rain on the day before.

Really enjoyed the day that we flew in the weakest conditions. Really enjoyed the day Zac and I climbed so high and just finished much faster than anyone else.

Task calls were very appropriate for the limited number of hours of daylight in late September.

We had great support from the volunteers especially at the launch. Launch conditions were excellent.

Scoring was very rapid and it was taking place remotely in Colombia. The trackers worked great after the first day (don't know what caused the problem on the first day).

You can review the races here: https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog__day_7 with Replay.

Day seven is quite interesting: https://airtribune.com/play/5526/2d

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sat, Sep 25 2021, 11:33:56 pm MDT

Day 7, task 6, narrative

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

The task:

My flight:

I hang on this time behind Bobby Bailey and he finally flies straight and to a turning pilot. I join up and there is a reasonable amount of lift around (less than 200 fpm). The pilots climb up together and we get to 6,300' a couple of times before taking the second clock at 2:15 PM. We are all outside the start cylinder and have to go back to get the second start time.

We all head out together and there are little bits of lift here and there but not much worth turning in. I make a few turns then head for Casa Grande Mountain and not finding anything there keep going east to the spot where I found good lift before when I came in second for the day. We've got an north northwest wind, the same as on that previous day, and I'm looking to get away from the hill, sort of in the lee and over some clear looking field.

At 1,600' AGL I find the lift and climb to 6,600' drifting in a 9 mph north northwest wind toward the first turnpoint. I nick the turnpoint and head southwest toward the Baker turnpoint. The few pilots that I see are quite a ways below me.

I quickly find more lift and climb to 6,500' before it gives out. I find good lift again and climb to 6,700' in a 15 mph northwest wind. The lift has been easy to find and the climbs, while not great, are plenty strong enough. I want to be high going into the hills before Baker.

I can see three gliders ahead lower than me but near the turnpoint and climbing, or at least circling. At the base of the hills I stop to get as high as possible climbing to 6,100' before heading into the turnpoint. A few pilots in front are turning a bit lower than I. I don't see Robin higher.

I hit the turnpoint and climb to 5,800' and then head north with Pete Lehmann just to my west. I had seen two pilots heading north very low as I came into the turnpoint. Probably Zac and Phil.

I'm heading into a 9 mph north northwest wind but it looks good ahead with wide open fields that look like they are hot. But, the sink is bad, averaging 400 fpm down, with spots of 900 fpm down.

I turn east to get out of the sink and out of Indian territory, but it does no good. I'm looking all over but soon find myself on the ground with Tyler right behind me.

Robin got to 7,600' at the second turnpoint and was down to 1,500' AGL heading north. He didn't get any substantial lift until he got to Arizona City. He was the only one to make it to goal.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sat, Sep 25 2021, 10:44:18 pm MDT

Day 7, task 6 results

Bill Soderquist|Butch Peachy|competition|Davis Straub|Greg Kendall|J.D. Guillemette|Jason Boehm|John Simon|Konstantin Lukyanov|Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann|Phill Bloom|Ric Caylor|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Tyler Borradaile|Willy Dydo|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 6 (open):

# Name Glider Time
(h:m:s)
Distance
(km)
Total
1 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 03:01:54 81.73 1000.0
2 Bill Soderquist Ww T3 63.95 764.9
3 Jason Boehm Wills Wing T3 60.35 736.1
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 59.67 731.2
5 Jd Guillemette Moyes RX3.5 57.07 704.1
6 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 55.26 686.4
7 Butch Peachy Moyes RX 3.5/S4 54.55 677.8
8 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 53.06 655.4
9 Ric Caylor Moyes RX5 Pro 52.78 649.9
10 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 52.13 641.8
11 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 52.25 640.3

Final:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 T 5 T 6 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 977.8 988.7 927.1 820.1 77.7 420.0 4211
2 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 766.7 930.0 573.5 699.5 117.2 466.4 3553
3 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 843.0 917.0 776.6 423.9 45.5 470.9 3477
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 672.5 832.3 763.4 211.0 102.2 731.2 3313
5 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 295.2 510.0 795.3 514.6 117.9 1000.0 3233
6 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 739.6 566.6 732.3 410.5 0.0 655.4 3104
7 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 984.8 200.1 577.8 512.0 145.4 641.9 3062
8 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 457.5 489.0 845.1 702.6 75.8 451.5 3022
9 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 792.2 243.0 378.3 680.6 162.0 686.4 2943
10 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 794.9 253.3 886.8 226.0 117.6 640.4 2919

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sat, Sep 25 2021, 8:59:40 am MDT

Day 6, task 5 results

Bill Soderquist|competition|Davis Straub|Greg Kendall|Jeff Chipman|John Simon|Konstantin Lukyanov|Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann|Owen Morse|Phill Bloom|Rob Cooper|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Tyler Borradaile|Willy Dydo|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 5 (open):

# Name Glider Distance
(km)
Total
1 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 34.30 162.0
2 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 29.85 145.4
3 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 19.44 117.9
4 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 19.36 117.6
5 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 19.24 117.2
6 Bill Soderquest Ww T3 18.23 112.6
7 Jeff Chipman Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 18.17 112.3
8 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 16.53 102.2
9 Rob Cooper Wills Wing T2C 15.97 98.3
10 Owen Morse Wills Wing T3 154 12.29 78.7

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 T 5 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 977.8 988.7 927.1 820.1 77.7 3791
2 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 766.7 930.0 573.5 699.5 117.2 3087
3 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 843.0 917.0 776.6 423.9 45.5 3006
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 672.5 832.3 763.4 211.0 102.2 2581
5 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 457.5 489.0 845.1 702.6 75.8 2570
6 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 739.6 566.6 732.3 410.5 0.0 2449
7 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 984.8 200.1 577.8 512.0 145.4 2420
8 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 794.9 253.3 886.8 226.0 117.6 2279
9 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 792.2 243.0 378.3 680.6 162.0 2256
10 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 295.2 510.0 795.3 514.6 117.9 2233

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Day 6, task 5

Fri, Sep 24 2021, 9:14:50 pm MDT

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

After the gust, the upper level clouds covered the sky. The pilot briefing was postponed twice to 12:30 PM from 10:30 AM. The clouds were still there but there was a little bit of blue way off to the east.

The task committee has tasks for both classes and after significant discussion about whether there would be any lift, Jamie says the task is on with a late launch. I have to setup my glider and get out there quickly.

The Sport Class launches first and soon they are all on the ground. Open class pilots are reluctant to launch once again after they see no one sticking.

A few of us get in line and I line up behind Robin Hamilton. It is already after the first start clock at 3:30 PM.

Bobby Bailey pulls me up and find lift just to the west. He makes some quick turns, the line goes slack and then the quick link breaks when the line goes tight again. I'm off at 844' AGL on a very weak day.

But, Bobby had been turning because there was lift there so I went to find it right away and starting climbing at 63 fpm with a 10 mph wind out of the west pushing me down the course line.

Went back up wind after climbing to 1,250' AGL drifting toward the resort. Found nothing but sink, went back east to get in the same line I had been in and found 6 fpm. Five minutes later I was able to move a little to the south and found 50 fpm climbing to 1,600' AGL

By now a few other pilots came and joined me and we just circled and circled drifting down the course line. We continue circling and climb to 1,900' AGL. We drift 9.5 km and take 50 minutes. It's 4:31 PM and the sun is getting close to the clouds in the west.

With the wind blowing at 10 mph out of the west northwest another pilot, likely to be Konstantin, and I head out. I'm able to find 100 fpm and four pilots join me. Heading out again I find 20 fpm to 1,800' AGL with the pilots still following.

After that there is not much as we stretch it out past the intersection of I8 and I10. Robin, Phil and I land in the same field.

Willie Dydo went out earlier and got the furthest on his own. Tyler got to ten kilometers past us. The sun was behind the clouds at this point.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Fri, Sep 24 2021, 11:37:52 am MDT

Gust front in the morning on Friday

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|weather

Five of us were out by the launch area standing by our gliders as the gust front came through. Lasted probably fifteen minutes.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Thu, Sep 23 2021, 5:31:20 pm MDT

Day five, no task, day is cancelled

competition|Greg Kendall|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|video

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

JD was measuring the south wind at 14 mph gusting to 22 mph. Lots of blowing dust in the field, which is quite discouraging. No pilots were willing to launch (other than Bill Bennett). Lots of task and launch time changes to no avail. That doesn't even count the cu-nimb that was forming over the second turnpoint (which the task and safety committees weren't noticing).

Meet director cancels the day as it gets later and later.

Bill Bennett launches after the day is canceled.

Note about the third task.

Replay, https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog__day_3, shows that it was the fact that Zac and I climbed to over 9,000' that determined the outcome for that day.

Zac left a gaggle east of Casa Grande mountain where he was at the bottom to come joined Pete Lehmann and I climbing faster to his south. Four pilots (excluding Greg Kendall, who took an earlier clock) were out ahead of us and high and doing well. While they got to the turnpoint first and headed back before we did, we were able to climb the highest 4 km before the turnpoint. This gave us a big advantage.

Phil and Tyler got stuck low coming back. We were 500 to 1000 meters higher than Simon and Hamilton. Soon only Simon was ahead and he got a bit low east of the mountain coming back. We came into the south end of the mountain high and quickly climbed. Robin was just to our east but not climbing nearly as well.

We climbed to over 2,500 meters and went on final glide to goal while everyone else was working to get up or stay up.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Wed, Sep 22 2021, 9:40:23 pm MDT

Day four, task four, results

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Kendall|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Kendall|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Greg Kendall|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

competition|Greg Kendall|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

competition|Greg Kendall|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 4 (open):

# Name Glider Distance
(km)
Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 70.89 820.1
2 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 54.69 702.6
3 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 54.10 699.5
4 Ric Caylor Moyes RX5 Pro 54.13 698.4
5 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 54.02 697.2
6 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 52.75 680.6
7 Jd Guillemette Moyes RX3.5 51.60 662.1
8 Ian Snowball Moyes RS4.5 47.64 592.9
9 Rob Cooper Wills Wing T2C 40.79 518.7
10 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 40.06 514.6

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 977.8 988.7 927.1 820.1 3714
2 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 766.7 930.0 573.5 699.5 2970
3 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 843.0 917.0 776.6 423.9 2961
4 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 457.5 489.0 845.1 702.6 2494
5 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 672.5 832.3 763.4 211.0 2479
6 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 739.6 566.6 732.3 410.5 2449
7 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 984.8 200.1 577.8 512.0 2275
8 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 794.9 253.3 886.8 226.0 2161
9 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 727.3 568.6 139.8 697.2 2133
10 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 295.2 510.0 795.3 514.6 2115

Neither Sport or Open Class pilots make goal.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Wed, Sep 22 2021, 6:47:03 pm MDT

Day four, task four, narrative

John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

The Task:

With the wind blowing 11 mph out of the south southeast at launch the task committee, at the last minute, changes the task to first send us out to the northwest to the edge of the mountains north of the sailplane port at Estrella, west of Maricopa and then back to the hotel when the winds are forecasted to lighten up.

Having learned their lesson the Sport Class pilots are happy to let us Open Class pilots go first and check out whether there is any lift or not. I launched sixth and Jim Prahl drug me around the sky not finding much and I worked -30 pm after pinning off at 2000' AGL. I leave that to find actual lift that overcomes my sink rate downwind to just south of the launch. 132 fpm is what I'm happy to be in.

Most of the thermals over the next hour in the start cylinder average less than 100 fpm, but I'm finally able to climb to 6,000' along with John Simon and Zac. Half a dozen pilots are near the top of the low stack and a few more are scrounging down below. Pilots are spread out looking around for better lift but little is to be found.

Unfortunately I was at 6,000' four minutes before the first start clock and lose 800' before the start gate opens and I head out. I'm following three pilots so it looks okay. I quickly find 100 fpm and climb to 5,500' before it peters out.

Heading to the northwest with John Simon and Jeff Galvin nearby I keep searching and not finding anything. Down to 300' AGL west of the stock yards I hit some lift and start turning. Jeff lands below me and John Simon is just as low in the next field to the north.

A few turns and the lift goes away no doubt pushed to the northwest toward the power lines at the edge of the field. I don't see John working his way up in the field on the other side of the power lines. Soon I have to land making a safe and graceful return to earth.

It isn't long before we see a gaggle of four pilots circling right up over us. Another pilot lands with us and then Willie Dydo comes in at 300' and proceeds to climb up and out. Another pilot lands in the field to our north.

Looking from our balcony on the sixth floor of the hotel I don't see anyone at goal. The Sport Class also had an out and return task to the southeast. I saw one Swift that looks like it made it back.

So close (this is where the guys out front get low for the first time):

I'm at 280' AGL finding lift, but not enough. Zac and John find lift north of the highway and climb up.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Wed, Sep 22 2021, 1:16:09 am MDT

Day three, task 3, Results

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Dinauer|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Dinauer|Greg Kendall|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Dinauer|Greg Kendall|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Greg Dinauer|Greg Kendall|John Simon|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 977.8 988.7 927.1 2894
2 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 843.0 917.0 776.6 2537
3 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 766.7 930.0 573.5 2270
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 672.5 832.3 763.4 2268
5 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 739.6 566.6 732.3 2039
6 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 794.9 253.3 886.8 1935
7 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 457.5 489.0 845.1 1792
8 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 984.8 200.1 577.8 1763
9 Greg Dinauer Aeros Combat 12 722.1 509.3 470.1 1702
10 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 295.2 510.0 795.3 1601

Four Sport Class pilots make it back to the hotel, Leonardo, Tim, LJ, and Sujeta, her first competition and first goal.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Tue, Sep 21 2021, 9:50:13 pm MDT

Day three, task 3, preliminary results

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Kendall|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Greg Kendall|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Greg Kendall|John Simon|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Time
(h:m:s)
Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 01:32:06 927.1
2 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 01:35:23 886.8
3 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 01:58:12 845.1
4 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 01:50:27 795.3
5 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 01:52:52 776.6
6 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 01:53:26 763.4
7 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 01:57:24 732.3
8 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:30:05 577.8
9 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:30:39 573.5
10 Gennadiy Khramov Wills Wing T2C 02:54:01 484.1

Four Sport Class pilots make it back to the hotel, Leonardo, Tim, LJ, and Sujeta, her first competition and first goal.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Tue, Sep 21 2021, 7:53:45 pm MDT

Day three, task 3, narrative and preliminary results

competition|Greg Kendall|John Simon|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

The Task:

The Sport Class wanted to go before the Open Class today and they had a 12:30 PM launch time with the first start clock at 1 PM and a total of six start clocks. The Swifts would launch first before the Sport Class and the Open Class would launch after the Sport Class.

The Swifts and the Sport Class pilots were all towed up and they promptly all landed back at the launch area. This set the tone for the next couple of hours. Only a few Sport Class pilots wanted to relaunch right away and the Open Class pilots were reluctant to get going after seeing how no one was sticking.

The task committee shortened the Open Class task given that no one was launching and pushed back the start time fifteen minutes to 2:15 PM with four start times. The launch cylinder had been reduced to 3 km given the forecast for light winds. This proved not be that great an idea, at least for some of us.

The Open Class launch was open starting at 1 PM (or maybe 1:15) but only a couple of Sport Class pilots were willing to be towed. They quickly landed back at launch. Finally around 2 PM, Bill Bennett launched in Open Class and that finally got other pilots to consider the possibility. With an open launch and many pilots still reluctant to go, I launched third or fourth with Bobby Bailey towing. One tug, the 914 tug from Whitewater with Johnny Thompson towing, was out of commission.

Bobby tried his tight spiral (not that tight) on me and then must have seen some pilots thermaling up a few kilometers to the southeast and drug me over to them. It was nice to see pilots actually climbing. Bobby had reported earlier that no one was getting above their tow height.

The four of us climbed to 4,400' before the lift gave out and Greg Kendal, at least, headed out on the course. He might have the second clock as I was on tow at the first start clock at 2:15 pm.

A few of us went back to the northwest and hooked up with some light lift and a couple of extra pilots at about 1,300' AGL just southwest of the launch. It averaged less than 100 fpm.

With a 9 mph northwest wind we drifted back to the southeast as the third start time approached. At 2:45 PM (the third clock) I was still at less than 4,000' and getting close to the edge of the start cylinder. A few pilots had already drifted outside the cylinder. I was with two other pilots.

I moved over and was working 50 fpm as I crossed the start cylinder still drifting. Still at less than 4,000' I moved east half a kilometer, one kilometer outside the 3 km start cylinder and found 330 fpm, the best lift so far by a wide margin. Three of us worked it.

I was able to climb to 6,700' with two pilots just below me, 2.34 km outside the 3 km start cylinder. I sure was wishing we had a 5 km start cylinder at that point as I didn't want to go back to take the last clock from that far out. I took off at 15:02 for the Casa Grande Mountain.

Stopped for a few turns in 230 fpm as I passed three pilots who had been out ahead and then out to the mountain after a 13 km glide and a lot of sink right along its western edge. Found rough lift on the eastern side of the mountain that was rough at first with a north northwest wind at 5 mph.

At 300+ fpm I climbed up to 8,000' with Zac coming in below me, but climbing up to me. We headed out to the east southeast toward the turnpoint. I had only two very light layers on, a thin thermal shirt and speed sleeves, but the air was quite pleasant if a bit cool.

We quickly found more lift and then climbed at over 350 fpm to 9,100' just 4 km from the turnpoint. We turned back into the head wind (10 mph) found a little bit of lift then found 400 fpm again on the east side of Casa Grande mountain to 7,900' which made of a safe and easy glide 20 kilometers into goal even against a 10 mph north northwest head wind.


https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 3: open:

# Name Glider SS Time
(h:m:s)
Lead.
Points
Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 14:45:00 01:32:06 33.0 927.1
2 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 14:45:00 01:35:23 31.0 886.8
3 Greg Kendall Moyes RX 3.5 14:15:00 01:58:12 92.7 845.1
4 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 14:45:00 01:50:27 36.2 795.3
5 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 14:45:00 01:52:52 36.6 776.6
6 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 14:45:00 01:53:26 31.4 763.4
7 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 14:45:00 01:57:24 23.8 732.3
8 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 14:45:00 02:30:05 22.1 577.8
9 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 14:45:00 02:30:39 21.7 573.5
10 Gennadiy Khramov Wills Wing T2C 15:00:00 02:54:01 484.1

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Tue, Sep 21 2021, 9:57:48 am MDT

Day three, task 3

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Live Tracking: https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=4085

Replay: https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog__day_3

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Mon, Sep 20 2021, 9:01:49 pm MDT

Day two, task two

Butch Peachy|competition|Greg Dinauer|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

Play Back: https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog__day_2

Open class task:

Not much of a flight:

Johnny Thompson tows me up again right after the Swifts and a couple of early birds at 12:37 PM. The lift is still weak near the hotel so I have to go west to hook up with the Swifts and other pilots and even there it's less than 200 fpm to 5,700' MSL. Lots of thermaling in little more than zero.

At about 7 or 8 minutes before the second clock at 1:45 PM the pilots around me northeast of the hotel head toward the edge of the start cylinder I'm thinking that it's too early and head the other direction to find much better lift than the zero we were giving up on. I climb to 5,800' and then head for the northeast edge of the cylinder.

As I fly to get out of the start cylinder I see a few pilots flying back, some of them quite low, so it looks like they are going back for the third or fourth clock. I keep going and find about eight pilots a thousand feet below me trying to get up three kilometers outside the start cylonder. Now I have a quandary.

I'm high with one other pilot who left the start cylinder with me. My desire is to just forget these guys down low cause I'm positive that there is much better lift just a few kilometers further along. But do I really want to leave eight other thermal finders and go out alone? I spend 10 minutes not climbing circling over these guys who aren't climbing either. Then we find 95 fpm and climb to 4,900'.

Finally, as I watch the pilots from the third clock come in low under us, I've had it and head out leading toward where I had previously thought there was much better lift. The pilots I'm with are not helping at all.

I find 267 fpm near the northeast end of the Casa Grande air field and climb to 5,400'. Of course, the other pilots joined me.

I lead out again and find over 300 fpm to 5,100' just before the first turnpoint at Signal Peak. My hangers ons join me.

I lead out again taking the turnpoint and heading for the foothills to the south. I've got a 6 mph head wind and I go for the hill sides that should gather the thermals. I stop for 100 fpm for one turn but I'm thinking that there is better lift a bit further in. I'm wrong.

Got fooled by the 300+ fpm lift in the previous thermal so I was not ready to take 100 fpm.

It's all sink the rest of the way down the hills to the flats and a premature landing.

Zac took the fourth clock and he was first to goal. Phil Bloom and John Simon who took the third clock came in right behind him. Konstantin Lukyanov from Russia was the last pilot into goal.

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 2

# Name Glider Time
(h:m:s)
Distance
(km)
Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 02:31:02 83.71 988.7
2 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:46:53 83.71 930.0
3 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 02:47:39 83.71 917.0
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 03:19:26 83.71 832.3
5 Jeff Chipman Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 80.73 725.7
6 Butch Peachy Moyes RX 3.5/S4 78.36 701.1
7 Ian Brubaker Wills Wing T2C 67.85 632.6
8 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 58.29 568.6
9 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C 154 58.10 566.6
10 Jason Boehm Wills Wing T3 56.71 561.5

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 1967
2 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 1760
3 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 1697
4 Konstantin Lukyanov Moyes Litespeed RX 1505
5 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C 154 1306
6 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 1296
7 Greg Dinauer Aeros Combat 12 1231
8 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 1185
9 Jeff Galvin Wills Wing T3 154 1181
10 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 1048

Leonardo Ortiz was the only Sport Class pilot at goal on day one. Leonardo and Tim Delaney were the only two Sport Class pilots at goal on day two.

Chris Zimmerman is out with a blown motor on his Swift, so only two Swifts left. Greg Chastain won day two and is in the lead overall.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Mon, Sep 20 2021, 11:22:32 am MDT

First Task Play Back

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Day One Play Back:

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog__day_1

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sun, Sep 19 2021, 10:57:09 pm MDT

First Task Results

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

competition|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

competition|John Simon|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/results

Task 1 (open class):

# Name Glider SS Time
(h:m:s)
Lead.
Points
Time
Points
Total
1 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 14:30:00 01:41:41 87.0 409.6 984.6
2 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 14:30:00 01:41:42 91.7 409.2 977.4
3 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 14:15:00 02:01:06 93.1 281.2 841.0
4 Jeff Galvin Ww T3 154 14:30:00 01:58:41 72.3 294.7 812.6
5 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 14:15:00 02:09:06 102.4 238.4 792.1
6 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 14:15:00 02:08:29 89.5 241.6 789.4
7 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 14:30:00 02:05:30 68.9 257.4 763.7
8 Ian Snowball Moyes RS4.5 14:30:00 02:05:27 39.5 257.6 738.1
9 Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann Wills Wing T2C-154 14:30:00 02:08:34 63.8 241.2 736.2
10 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 14:30:00 02:08:55 54.1 239.4 723.8

No results for sport class yet.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sun, Sep 19 2021, 10:49:34 pm MDT

Day 1, task 1

Brian Porter|John Simon|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Robin Hamilton|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|Zac Majors

The task and my flight:

There is a 5 km start cylinder around the launch at the Francisco Grande Hotel airfield (desert). The first leg is about over the Casa Grande airfield to a 2 km cylinder around Signal Peak. Signal Peak is under the 8,000' bottom of the Phoenix Sky Harbor Class B air space, so you don't want to be too high.

The second leg is to the tiny paved airfield at Sarita to the east southeast out in the flats, 400 meter cylinder. Next head north over a bit of no man's land to the intersection at Magma, which is also under the Phoenix airspace. Finally back to a sort of empty field that might have had a dirt air field years ago at Valley.

The forecast was for strong southwest winds aloft which might make getting back to Valley a bit of trouble. Forecast also said no cu's , but there are plenty around. I'm assuming that the heavy rain yesterday softened the lift near the hotel.

Robin Hamilton decides to launch later so I'm first to launch in order but behind two early birds and three Swifts. Two Swift pilots (Brian Porter and Steve Morris) are in France for the new Swift 3 so we don't have our five Swift Pilots. Chris Zimmerman is flying a motorized Swift with a gas motor.

Jonny Thompson tows me up to 2,000' AGL on the four stroke Dragonfly and there is light lift around. I'm able to climb to 4,500' (3,200' AGL) but not more than that. Others seem to be able to get higher but that's as high as I get over the next hour.

Towed up at 1:15 PM, I take the second clock at 2:15 PM at 2300' AGL and head northwest toward the Casa Grande airfield. I'm basically alone.

I quickly find the best lift so far at 270 fpm and climb up to 5,000' MSL. Heading to the cu's to the north of the airfield I find 370 fpm and climb to 7,000'. I'm almost 3 km north of the course line (going for the clouds) and heading for Phoenix airspace.

I nick the turnpoint at Signal Mountain below the airspace and head down south along the foothills toward more cu's. Finally I hit the lift at 1,300' AGL over the hillsides and climb at over 400 fpm to 7,900' (way out from under the airspace) with JD hanging around.

No more mountains to fly as we head off toward Sarita to the east. I'm 2km south of the course line now. There are some cu's out there so it doesn't look so bad, but I'm not expecting at much as I just got at the west facing hill sides with a westerly 5 mph wind.

I take 100 fpm just before Sarita and nick it at 3,300' AGL before heading north toward Magma. There are bigger cu's over Coolidge a little west of the course line, but smaller cu's ahead to the north. I see Zac Majors from the third clock catch up with me as I pass by Coolidge. A few other pilots also. John Simon who started at the second clock also is just a few hundred feet below.

I work 200 fpm east of Coolidge and then head off north to the east of Zac at his elevation at 5,500'. It's a ten kilometer glide before we find 150 fpm with Zac just above me and I'm down to 1,000' AGL.

Zac and Tyler Borradaile work better lift just to my east as I work 150 fpm to 4,700'. I made an attempt to find better lift on the peak just to the northwest given the west wind but that didn't work out as Tyler and Zac found better lift drifting to the east under the same cu that I was under. They just hung there as Zac (at least) knew that they were in first place and didn't need to take any chances or rush out ahead as goal wasn't that far away).

I quit the 150 fpm and headed north seeing that there were cu's and sunlight ahead. Nothing seemed to work whenever I turned in lift so I got to the Magma turnpoint at 2,200' AGL and headed south, with a line of cu's ahead of me.

Finally I hit 260 fpm just south of the cotton fields (I thought that they didn't have any water this year as the Colorado River is so far down and they are the least senior water rights holders) around the turnpoint. That lift got me to 5,200' about 4,000' AGL and with 13 km to goal the race was on.

Arrived with three pilots on the ground. Looks like thirteen pilots made goal.

Results should be out soon. Daniel Velez in Colombia is doing the scoring remotely.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

Sat, Sep 18 2021, 5:44:57 pm MDT

Are the monsoons still here?

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|photo

Jamie Shelden|photo|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Photo by Jamie Shelden

Heavy rains today, the day before the start of the SCFR. Rain in the desert. Will the field be passable?

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

July 25, 2021, 12:07:01 pm MDT

Number of pilots allowed has risen from 24 to 45

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Looks like that means that Bobby's and April's tugs are coming out with Jim Prahl from Wilotree Park.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

July 15, 2021, 5:59:13 pm MDT

Forty one pilots registered and paid

Gregg "Kim" Ludwig|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Looks like we'll have enough pilots to have the tugs brought out from Wilotree Park. Likely we'll also have Gregg Ludwig and his super trike also.

2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 25, 2021, 8:57:36 pm MDT

Forty five pilots have registered

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Thirty eight have paid (and I assume committed to coming to the competition). With four more paid (and committed), then the tugs are going to be coming out from Wilotree Park. If all forty five want to come there will need to be an additional tug, which is very possible.

All thirteen of the Sport pilots have paid. Twenty three of the twenty seven registered open class pilots have paid. It sure looks like there will be forty two at least that will pay and commit to coming to the competition.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 22, 2021, 11:16:26 pm MDT

Five Swift pilots have registered

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Two have paid and committed. What's up with the other three?

If they all come I think that that would be the biggest Swift competition in the US ever.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 21, 2021, 8:48:01 pm MDT

42 pilots have registered

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Now, forty two pilots have registered for the SCFR including four Swift pilots, thirteen sport class pilots and twenty five open class pilots. To bring out two tugs from Wilotree Park, Jamie says that she needs to have forty two pilots registered and paid.

Thirty one pilots have paid. Eleven pilots haven't paid.

Jamie writes:

Entry Fees: The entry fee for the competition is $275 (does not include tow fees) if paid by August 1st. After August 1st, $375. Entry fees are required in full to complete your registration and to secure your entry.

So we'll probably know by August 1st who is committed to coming to the SCFR. You might also want to make your room reservations.

She also writes:

We will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

Personally I think that there is a bit more flexibility and we could do okay with thirty or so pilots and actually with more than forty two, but those arrangements haven't been finalized yet. It depends, again, on how many pilots commit to coming and the tugs from Wilotree Park will definitely not come out unless forty two have committed.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 16, 2021, 8:26:37 MDT

Race to Register and Pay

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

To secure your slot in the SCFR you need to register and pay Jamie Shelden at <<jamie>>. Just like the race for the first twenty four slots, there is now a race for the next eighteen with two pilots already secured and ten on the waiting list. But being on the waiting list means nothing. Crossing the finish line before others means getting in your payment of $275 before the number of pilots goes to eighteen paid in addition to the twenty four already confirmed.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 15, 2021, 7:08:58 MDT

Francisco Grande reservations

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/blog/accommodation-at-the-francisco-grande-resort

Accommodation at the Francisco Grande Resort

Please make sure to reserve your room at the Francisco Grande as soon as possible. Individual reservations must be made as follows: Individuals must identify themselves as part of Santa Cruz Flats Race, and provide us with guest name, type of room, check-in and check-out dates. Any requests for special arrangements must be made at the time of this call. The Francisco Grande Hotel and Golf Resort toll free reservations line is 1-800-237-4238.

After August 1, the resort releases any unused rooms in our block, so if you wait until after that date, there may not be anything left.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 14, 2021, 4:46:34 pm EDT

24 pilots confirmed, 25 pilots paid.

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Jamie has written previously:

We will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

I take that to mean that 18 (now 17) additional pilots need to register and pay before Jamie will call for the tugs from Wilotree Park. You pay by sending $275 to <<jamie>> after you register.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 14, 2021, 12:50:02 pm EDT

Register and pay the entry fee ASAP

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Check and see how many pilots are confirmed. On Monday morning there were 31 registered, but 42 need to be registered and paid to bring the tugs from Florida. Twenty two pilots were confirmed on Monday morning, so two "open" slots left.

See Jamie's requirements re registration and payment here: https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/info/details

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 7, 2021, 8:04:36 pm MDT

Registration to open on Friday

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/info/details

Jamie says that registration will open on Friday, June 11th at noon Pacific Daylight Time.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 7, 2021, 3:01:59 pm MDT

Register and pay next week

April Mackin|COVID|Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

"Jamie Shelden" <naughtylawyer> writes:

We're really happy to be organizing the Santa Cruz Flats Race again this September after a year off due to COVID. But, I wanted to explain the tug situation so everyone understands how registration and payment will work this year. Thanks to Sonora Wings, we have two dragonflies in Casa Grande. If we have no more than 22-24 pilots, we’ll be covered with these local dragonflies. However, if we have more than 24 pilots register, we will need to bring tugs from out of the area. This is where the issues start. Bob Bailey and April Mackin are able to transport two dragonflies from Florida via trailer. This requires removing the wings and carefully packing them into a trailer and driving them across the country to Casa Grande. Bob and April have done this nearly every year that we have held the event and we are eternally grateful. Here’s the hitch though: the cost of driving the trailer out to Arizona is the same if we put one tug or two tugs in it and that cost is extremely high. What this means is that it is only cost effective to pack up the trailer and bring 2 dragonflies. Bringing just one would make towing very very expensive.

So, we are in a situation where we can have either two or four dragonflies at the Santa Cruz Flats Race, but not three. If we have 42 people register, pay and commit to attend, all is great. But, if we have only 30, the tow fees to each pilot would be prohibitively expensive. With this in mind, it is critical that pilots register, pay registration fees and commit to participate no later than one month before the start of the competition.

When registration opens in about a week, we will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

I realize this is complicated, but we don’t want to wait until the week before the competition starts to determine how much tow fees will be and we don’t want to risk having more than 24, but fewer than 42 pilots because that would make tow fees in excess of $550/person.

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2021 Santa Cruz Flats Race »

June 1, 2021, 10:36:36 MDT

Jamie Shelden is going back to Casa Grande

Jamie Shelden|Risk Retention Group|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|USHPA

The competition will be held September 19th through the 25th. The USHPA and the RRRG consider Jamie to be a worthy and reliable meet organizer.

Be prepared for high rental car rates and airlines making up for pandemic era loses.

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Every Day Since the Competition Ended

May 5, 2021, 12:48:43 pm EDT

Every Day Since the Competition Ended

Maybe it will rain tomorrow

Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

This is what the sky has looked like every day since the Wilotree Park Nationals ended on April 25th:

The cu's started forming at 9:30 AM.

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 25, 2021, 10:14:20 pm EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Task 4, the last day

Attila Plasch|Bobby Bailey|Butch Peachy|competition|Davis Straub|Derrick Turner|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Leonardo Ortiz|Moyes Litespeed RX|PG|Robin Hamilton|Tim Delaney|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

The Replay: https://airtribune.com/play/5021/2d

It was a difficult day to end a meet that proved to have difficult days. The day started with a little bit of rain as a thin line of thunderstorms brushed by, then dark skies for a few hours which made the prospects of staying up seem remote, then after 2 PM the sky started to open up, the clouds went away and we had a blue day. The wind was out of the west but not nearly as strong as all the models as well as the National Weather Service predicted with not so strong gust factors either.

Yes, Derrick, Willy Dydo, and Alan Arcos took off and only Derrick was able to stay up for a good while before landing. The task committee then changed the task to an open window. Pilots were very reluctant to get going while there were start gates because they feared getting blown out of the 5 km start cylinder with weak lift and strong winds (those were forecast at least).

Pilots kept hesitating which is why we changed to task to make it so there would not be a penalty for leaving the start cylinder, but finally they started launching after 3:30 PM, and I was able to get pulled up by Bobby Bailey at 4:06 PM. It was the best tow I've every had from him as I insisted that he tow me straight up wind and do not do any turns. With the wind still seeming to be strong I wanted to get upwind as far as possible and he took me as far as Osborn field.

We had been in lift it seemed and I found 300 fpm right off tow. I was all alone and could not see any other pilots so I was completely happy to be turning at a radius that maximized my climb rate without having to look after other pilot's circling. That did not last long. Bruce immediately came over to me, just above me and JD just below so at least they were not a bother. Then Zac and Robin, but again Robin was below and Zac up with Bruce, but it was starting to get crowded. At least no one else was at my altitude. Bruce was 60 feet above me.

The wind was only 12 mph out of the west, so all the scary forecasts about 22 mph at 2,000' were not the case and I wondered why the pilots who had gone up earlier reported strong winds and kept us on the ground.

Alan Arcos, Derrick Turner and John Simon joined the thermal and things got very choppy. You can see the result of going in and out of the core on the SeeYou altitude graph. We quit going up for a few minutes then slowly climbed to 3,600'.

Following Zac we all headed southwest into a 17 mph west wind. We found it a bit to everyone else's east and nine pilots came together to bother each other in another weak thermal (100 fpm). I was only able to climb to 2,700' before JD and John Simon lead out and headed southwest again.

They found weak lift just west of highway 33 at 1,400' I came in at 700' and wasn't willing to stay under them for more than one turn not finding anything. There was a very inviting field to the north a little and I landed there followed soon by Alan Arcos and Butch Peachy.

After that it was only six pilots left in the air and slowly Robin, Zac and Bruce had them drop out below them. Zac and Robin were able to make it a total of 30 kilometers down the course line landing near the mines north of Wallaby Ranch.

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 4:

# Name Glider Distance (km) Total
1 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 29.76 112.8
2 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 29.66 112.6
3 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 25.89 100.7
4 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 15.92 77.4
5 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 14.24 72.3
6 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 13.86 71.2
7 JD Guillemette Moyes RX3.5 11.30 61.5
8 Mick Howard Moyes RX 3.5 9.40 53.8
9 Tavo Gutierrez Wills Wing T3 154 8.72 51.1
10 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 7.96 48.0
11 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 7.55 46.3

Finals:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 661.2 781.1 864.1 112.6 2419
2 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 674.4 832.1 639.6 29.9 2176
3 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 310.2 805.3 916.8 112.8 2145
4 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 421.7 710.5 880.4 100.7 2113
5 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 633.1 856.0 439.9 72.3 2001
6 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 408.7 796.3 735.4 29.9 1970
7 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 379.3 750.8 720.6 48.0 1899
8 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 133.3 742.6 752.9 71.2 1700
9 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 220.0 814.5 629.6 0.0 1664
10 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 447.3 706.7 463.6 38.6 1656

Sport Class Final Results (they didn't fly on the last day):

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 T 4 Total
1 Leonardo Ortiz Moyes Litesport 4 308.3 673.5 514.7 0.0 1497
2 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 213.4 787.2 408.2 0.0 1409
3 Rick Warner Wills Wing Sport 2 155 102.7 635.2 567.7 0.0 1306
4 Jordan Stratton Moyes Gecko 155 133.8 748.1 368.9 0.0 1251
5 L.J. Omara Wills Wing Sport 3 155 151.0 726.4 353.8 0.0 1231
6 Attila Plasch WillsWing U2 209.2 852.9 161.0 0.0 1223
7 Bill Snyder Wills Wing U2 145 150.5 538.8 410.4 0.0 1100
8 Bill Monghaloe Bautek Fizz 0.0 742.2 350.7 0.0 1093
9 Kelly Myrkle Moyes Gecko 118.5 657.2 277.5 0.0 1053
10 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 147.3 504.4 380.5 0.0 1032

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2771828

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/25.4.2021/20:06

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals - Midair During Task 3 »

Sat, Apr 24 2021, 7:40:01 pm EDT

Pedro and Tyler collide while thermaling

CIVL|collision|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Below you will see frames of the period just before and at the time of the collision taken every two seconds from their track log files. You can make your own interpretation of who should have done what to avoid this incident. Tyler is the red glider (978) and Pedro the blue one (969). I have left the pictures at their original size as taken on my computer.

Be aware that at launch Pedro's instrument measured 140' and Tyler's measured 120' of elevation (GPS altitude). Therefore the altitudes displayed in these frames could easily be off from each other by 20' (or more) or not at all.

You can make your own interpretation of what you see here. Note the different climb rates between the two gliders. Both gliders were flying after the collision and both pilots followed the CIVL section 7 rule: "A competitor involved in a collision in the air must not continue the flight if the structural integrity of his glider is in doubt."

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 24, 2021, 7:11:15 pm EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

We don't go that great up wind when it is windy

Dragonfly|Larry Bunner|PG|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Dragonfly|Larry Bunner|Naviter Blade|PG|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Replay of the task: https://airtribune.com/play/5020/2d

On Friday, after a delay to move the start box to the west side of the east/west runway we had the first start window at 3 PM. Launch went smoothly for the open class, but there were further delays for the Sport Class.

I had a galloping tow behind Mick Howard in his 582 2-cycle powered (under powered) Dragonfly and when the rope went completely slack at 1,600' and we both went sideways, him to the right, me to the left, I pulled the release, but the weaklink (200 lbs.) broke at the same time and the bridle went for an unexpected flight into a small pond. We had just been in 400 fpm so it was easy to turn around and start climbing.

Half a dozen pilots were soon at cloud base which was over 4,000'. There were plenty of cu's and they were all working and you just had to be careful about the 11 mph southeast wind and not let it blow you too far outside the 5 km start cylinder. I was able to start at 3:04 PM as I watched the count down on the Naviter Blade and listen to its messages about when to get to the edge of the start window. It seemed to know exactly when to go.

With a strong southeast wind we were racing over the ground at almost 50 mph. There were multiple cu's ahead so little worry about finding lift. The first turnpoint was downwind to Center Hill.

With everyone in the first thermal along the course line we were going up at 400 fpm on average to 4,900'. After touching the turnpoint at Center Hill we headed north toward the 15 km turnpoint cylinder around Dallas, a waypoint at the northwest corner of the Villages. The waypoint had been expanded to account for the delay at launch.

It was 12 km to the next thermal from the previous one with a 17:1 glide ratio. A 300 fpm climb rate and then the next thermal just northwest of the prisons and south of the Turnpike at 400+ fpm to 4,900' before heading for and tagging the Dallas turnpoint just on the south edge of the Villages.

Now we had to turn into the wind and things did not go as well. The lift miraculously got much weaker with a climb of 100 fpm and then a little less than 200 fpm over a lake on the north side of the Turnpike with a 13 mph east southeast wind. About a dozen pilots were all in the lead gaggle just north of the Turnpike.

I left the thermal at 3,800'. We were getting to almost 5,000' just a few minutes earlier. Now we weren't getting as high as we would like heading into the east southeast wind. The half dozen gliders above me headed a little more southerly as I headed right down the Turnpike trying to get upwind of the course line back to Wilotree Park. Zac was heading that way also as there were good looking clouds in that direction and a lot fewer clouds south of the Turnpike.

The back and forth had begun. I found 230 fpm 4 km to the east and climbed to 4,300', then went east again and climbed to 4,500' at 150fpm with Larry Bunner. Heading toward the better looking clouds north of the Turnpike I was able to gain a total of 8 km to the east and get upwind of the course line but I was now down to 2,700' and not finding anything.

I saw Larry turning back behind me and turned around to see if I could get up in that thermal. That cost me half the distance I had gained and I found only weak lift that I'm able to use to climb to 2,500'. Larry got to 4,000' and flew to the south southeast landing soon there after.

I hooked up with Maria Garcia in the light lift and after topping out we headed south east toward the east west road for a safe landing with good retrieval. Down to 900' AGL we found a little spot of lift and started turning in an extremely pleasant climb. We climbed at 80 fpm and then I noticed Tavo Gutierrez circling below us just south of the highway and went over to him to find almost 200 fpm. I climbed to 3,800' over the prisons losing 4 km.

Topping out I headed east down the highway toward highway 48 and along the Turnpike toward a good looking cloud but found a net pf no gain at 1,000'. I should have just kept going, but I turned around and landed in a friendly field to the west. The lift was negative on the upwind side of the cloud. Retrieval from the Turnpike was not as easy as from the surface roads, but it was possible.

Pilots were scattered about in this area except for Bruce, Zac and Robin who while also had to do back and forths were able to get further south and a lot closer to Wilotree Park.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/23.4.2021/18:23

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2768418

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 24, 2021, 9:16:41 EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Results from Task 3

competition|Davis Straub|Gary Anderson|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Larry Bunner|Moyes Litespeed RX|Raul Guerra|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

Replay of the task: https://airtribune.com/play/5020/2d

Results: https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 3:

# Name Glider Distance (km) Total
1 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 75.84 916.8
2 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 71.22 880.3
3 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 69.74 863.9
4 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 58.18 752.1
5 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 Team 57.76 744.5
6 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 56.55 734.5
7 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 55.36 719.6
8 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 54.59 706.8
9 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 53.99 697.3
10 Raul Guerra ICARO Laminar 14,1 52.77 674.1

Cumulative:

Name Glider Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 2306
2 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 2146
3 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 2032
4 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 2013
5 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 1940
6 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 1929
7 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 1851
8 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 1664
9 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 1629
10 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 1618

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

Thu, Apr 22 2021, 9:45:15 pm EDT

Results from Task 2

competition|Davis Straub|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

The forecast for the day:

How is Thursday different from Wednesday?

The wind shifts from northwest to northeast.

Day starts off sunny.

Be aware of the lake effect where Lake Apopka suppresses the lift just to our east and over us.

Winds are lighter at 4 PM (about half the wind speeds on Wednesday).

There will be a high pressure centered on the Florida/Georgia border.

Six degree lower surface temperatures and lower high temperature for the day, 79 vs. 84.

NWS:

Thursday

Sunny, with a high near 80. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.

Hourly forecast for the afternoon: Northeast surface winds at 9 mph decreasing to 7 mph, cloud cover 7% dropping to 4% by 4 PM.

https://www.wunderground.com/maps/surface-analysis/24hr

Shows cold front in Miami at 2 PM tomorrow, clear skies to the north.

HRRR

1 PM:

Northeast surface wind at 1 PM: 9 mph, 2000' 11 mph

TOL at 1 PM: 3,300'

Updraft Velocity at 1 pm: 440 fpm

CB at 1 PM: 3,300'

B/S at 1 PM: 3.4

Cloud cover 7%

4 PM

Northeast surface wind at 4 PM: 7 mph, 2000' 9 mph

TOL at 4 PM: 3,800'

Updraft Velocity at 4 PM: 460 fpm

CB at 4 PM: 0'

B/S at 4 PM: 5.6

Cloud cover 9%

Skew-T:

1 PM:

TOL: 3,200'

Temperature: 56 degrees at TOL (73 on the surface)

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 2:

# Name Glider SS ES Time Speed (km/h) Total
1 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 15:15:00 16:38:39 01:23:39 32.2 856.0
2 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 15:15:00 16:40:26 01:25:26 31.5 832.1
3 Pedro L. garcia Wills Wing T3 144 15:15:00 16:42:06 01:27:06 30.9 814.5
4 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 15:15:00 16:42:13 01:27:13 30.9 805.3
5 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 15:15:00 16:42:43 01:27:43 30.7 796.3
6 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 15:30:00 16:51:20 01:21:20 33.1 783.8
7 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 15:15:00 16:44:19 01:29:19 30.2 781.1
8 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 15:15:00 16:47:53 01:32:53 29.0 750.8
9 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 15:15:00 16:48:09 01:33:09 28.9 742.6
10 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 15:15:00 16:50:43 01:35:43 28.1 718.8

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Total
1 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 1507
2 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 1489
3 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 1442
4 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 1205
5 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 1154
6 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 1132
7 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 1130
8 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 1116
9 Pedro L. garcia Wills Wing T3 144 1035
10 Austin Marshall Wills Wing T3 154 1012

Eleven Sport Class pilots made goal with Attila winning the day and he is first overall afater two tasks. See results at link above.

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 21, 2021, 9:35:24 pm EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Results from Task 2

Butch Peachy|competition|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 1:

Name Glider Time Distance (km) Total
1 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:17:35 73.84 674.4
2 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 02:18:00 73.84 661.2
3 Derreck Turner Moyes RX 4 02:34:19 73.84 633.1
4 Thaisio Feliz Moyes RX5 Technora 66.74 476.6
5 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 60.60 447.3
6 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 56.17 421.7
7 Patrick Pannese Wills Wing T2C 52.49 408.7
8 Alan Arcos Icaro Laminar 13.7 55.57 379.3
9 Butch Peachy Moyes RX 3.5 49.54 328.6
10 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 40.43 310.2

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 21, 2021, 4:16:36 pm EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Rain on day two, but blue on day three

Task 1:

Zac and Tyler way far in the lead.

Tyler and then Zac first and second for the day. All other pilots who are in the air are 40 km behind.

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals »

April 19, 2021, 8:50:04 pm EDT

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Rain

It cleared up around 3 PM, but didn't show much prospects of lift then. We went for a bike ride, https://www.strava.com/activities/5156726742.

Good chance of rain on Tuesday then things clear up on Wednesday.

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2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 7 »

April 17, 2021, 5:54:36 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 7

Cancelled

The southwest wind was too strong. If the wind direction had been south, southeast, south southeast, west, east, northeast, northwest, or north, the speed would have been fine. The results at the end of day 6 are the final results.

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2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 6 »

April 16, 2021, 8:30:48 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 6

Results

competition|Davis Straub|Filippo Oppici|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Phill Bloom|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

# Id Name Glider Time Distance (km) Total
1 948 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 02:56:52 57.74 342.0
2 973 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:57:35 57.74 334.7
3 979 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 02:57:36 57.74 332.4
4 978 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:58:22 57.74 329.8
5 974 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 23.20 168.4
6 985 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 19.23 152.8
7 957 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 12.96 132.0
8 969 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 12.90 131.8
9 946 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 12.68 130.8
10 967 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 12.11 127.9

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 6 »

April 16, 2021, 7:43:02 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 6

Blue Sky|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|PG|Wallaby Ranch

You know, every now and then
I think you might like to hear something from us
Nice and easy but there's just one thing
You see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy
We always do it nice and rough

The forecast:

NWS:

Today

A slight chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 8am. Partly sunny, with a high near 82. West wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Hourly in the afternoon: 6 mph west wind at 1 pm increasing to 8 mph west northwest by 4 PM, cloud cover 64%. Hourly and daily forecast do not agree on high temperature with hourly displaying 78 degrees.

RAP

1 PM:

Southwest surface wind at 1 PM: 6 mph, 2000' 8 mph , 4,000' 14 mph

TOL at 1 PM: 5,100'

Updraft Velocity at 1 pm: 600 fpm

CB at 1 PM: 4,000'

B/S at 1 PM: 8.0

4 PM:

West southwest surface wind at 4 PM: 10 mph, 2,000' 14 mh, 4,000' 14 mph

TOL at 4 PM: 6,100'

Updraft Velocity at 4 PM: 620 fpm

CB at 4 PM: 5,100'

B/S at 4 PM: 7.0

This is what it looks like most of the day:

Every once in a while it will open up and there will be sunshine on the ground., Cu's form under the high level clouds and there are spots of rain here and there.

We've got a hell of a task:

Wilotree Park to Gore and then back to Wallaby Ranch.

There is some reluctance to launch given how dark the sky looks at times. They delay the launch by 40 minutes so it's not until 1:20 that pilots start launching. Kasey pulls me up at 1:40 above everyone else but two pilots at 2,100' (2,000' AGL). I'm right under those two pilots that are off by themselves and under a weak looking cu. Everything looks weak under the high level clouds.

I climb to 2,800' but fifteen minutes after I pinned off I'm back down to where I started. Despite unrelenting circling and joisting with one pilot after another, half an hour after I launched I'm down to 800' AGL at the south end of the field. I climb at 6.6 fpm until I find 160 fpm west of Wilotree Park and climb to 2,200'. I was previously very concerned about how all of us would land at the same time at the park, which it looked like we were going to do. There were many relights.

After a few different thermals and lift at around 130 fpm I'm able to climb to 3,200'. I'm only 2.5 kilometers from Wilotree, but hanging with four or five other pilots downwind to the east.

I follow the pilots I'm near to the southeast to where just outside the 5 km start cylinder they find 144 fpm and I join in. Pilots are landing every where behind us.

It is all dark and shaded to the south along our course line. We get to 2,900' and then the six of us head south into the darkness. For over 6 km we glide and it looks like we are going to land (as two pilots already did) just north of the mines. Down to 900' AGL I spot Zac below us just north of the mines and to our east when he begins to turn. We come over him and start turning in lift that averages 134 fpm. I'm on top of him for at least 5 minutes when I lose my focus for a second and suddenly I'm on the bottom and out of contact. I see the five pilots I was with climb up faster and get away from me.

I head southeast to get under where they have stopped for lift but it takes me nine minutes to get back up to 3,000' and I can no longer see the other pilots.

I'm just east of the mines but in an area where retrieval will not be easy unless I drop straight down. I've got to go south following where they went to get south of highway 474. I head for the best looking patch of cumulus cloud but there is no lift there. I'm down to 1,400' at 474.

South of this east west road there are very limited access possibilities for quite a ways. I feel that I need 3,000' to chance going out south of the highway. I can see to the south that there is blue sky and lots of cumulus clouds that look so much better than anything that we have been flying in., but they are too far away for a pilot who is as low as I am.

I search around near the highway but not finding any lift land in a field just to the north of the road.

The pilots I was with are able to make it to the cu's and then complete the task.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/16.4.2021/17:40

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2763323

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2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 5 »

April 15, 2021, 7:55:32 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 5

Very windy and overcast

Bobby Bailey|competition|Davis Straub|Filippo Oppici|John Simon|Kevin Carter|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|PG|Raul Guerra|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Zac Majors

Replay: https://airtribune.com/play/5009/2d

Forecast:

There is a large mass of clouds moving from west to east in the northern Gulf. We saw a bit of this on Wednesday in the morning before the clouds to the north and west disappeared.

NWS:

Thursday

Increasing clouds, with a high near 87. South wind 5 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.

Hourly in the afternoon: 11 mph southwest wind at noon increasing to 15 mph by 5 PM and turning west, cloud cover going from 19% to 50% then 71% at 5 PM

HRRR

1 PM:

Southwest surface wind at 1 PM: 14 mph, 2000' 21 mph, 4000' 22 mph

TOL at 1 PM: 4,800'

Updraft Velocity at 1 pm: 500 fpm

CB at 1 PM: 4600'

B/S at 1 PM: 4.3

4 PM:

West southwest surface wind at 4 PM: 13 mph, 4,000' 21 mph

TOL at 4 PM: 3,900'

Updraft Velocity at 4 PM: 400 fpm

CB at 4 PM: 0'

B/S at 4 PM: 1.4

So we expect a windy and gusty day with the upper level clouds coming completely over us, but letting in filter sunlight. With the southwest direction we first look at a task to the northeast but conclude that with the high winds the safety factor finding landable areas would be very narrow. I propose a cross wind task to the north hoping that we will get lighter winds and it will be soarable.

Results: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Task 4: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5009/day/open-class

# Name Glider Distance Total
1 JD Guillemette Moyes RX3.5 26.72 192.0
2 Raul Guerra Icaro Laminar 14.7 23.65 177.4
3 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 23.67 177.3
4 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 23.59 176.8
5 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 23.54 176.2
6 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 23.12 173.4
7 Konrad Heilmann Moyes Litespeed RX3.5 Technora 22.75 169.0
8 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 22.40 165.1
9 Austin Marshall Wills Wing T3 154 18.32 122.0
10 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 18.07 120.7

Cumulative: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5009/comp/open-class

# Name Glider Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 2972
2 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 2936
3 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 2916
4 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 2845
5 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 2844
6 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 2599
6 Raul Guerra Icaro Laminar 14.7 2599
8 Kevin Carter Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 2541
9 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 2283
10 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 2220

There was no Sport Class task today given the high winds forecasted.

The winds at launch were within our pre assigned parameters (20 mph south and 10 mph west - so 15 mph southwest). The safety and meet director were monitoring the winds at launch and their criteria was 10 - 15 mph with no gusts over 5 mph. That's what they got.

The high level clouds from the north came near us but there were plenty of cu's underneath them. When I got pulled up after not choosing to go in the first round I pinned off in lift at 1,500' behind Bobby Bailey. I quickly climbed to 5,200' at 335 fpm despite all the upper level clouds. I was drifting at 12 mph out of the west southwest. I wanted to get to the west side of the 5 km start cylinder, which was not all that easy to do.

Heading west and then climbing back to 5,000' it was time to go to get the first start clock.

After the task opened we all raced to the northwest and found lift west of Groveland again back to 5,000'. I followed three pilots ahead and over me and found 350 fpm to 4,500' behind them and they had to come back to me.

As we went further north under the upper level clouds, but still toward cumulus clouds, the lift deteriorated. As we came over Grass Root airfield at a little less than 3,000' we spotted Zac Majors circling low on the north side. We climbed at 140 fpm to 3,300'. Zac headed off to the northwest low and we all lost track of him, except maybe Austin.

I'm only able to climb to 2,800' in the next thermal at 124 fpm. Others get higher. We are all being pushed to the east northeast and there is a small gaggle northeast of the Turnpike. I don't find any lift under them at 2,600' and head west toward the open fields on the south side of the Turnpike and near highway33. I note that the wind is 22 mph out of the west.

Making very slow progress against the head wind, down to 1,200', and not being able to make it to my preferred field to the west I turn east to be able to land near highway 27. There is a huge field there and I come in at 500' and stay prone and on the base tube all the way to the ground not wanting to get turned. My ground speed is less than 5 mph when I land in a nice soft field. It is very turbulent.

Kevin Carter measures 30 mph when he is coming in to land, hits 1,500 fpm low, and just keeps heading into the wind and landing. J.D. gets out ahead of everyone and wins the day.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/15.4.2021/17:34

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2762660

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 4 »

April 14, 2021, 10:24:21 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 4

Task 3, more blue then a few cu's

Attila Plasch|competition|Filippo Oppici|John Simon|Kevin Carter|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Phill Bloom|Raul Guerra|Robin Hamilton|Tim Delaney|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Zac Majors

The forecast:

NWS:

Wednesday

Patchy fog before 8am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 88. Light southeast wind becoming south southeast 5 to 10 mph in the morning.

Hourly in the afternoon: 7 mph south southeast wind , 38% decreasing to 23% cloud cover

RAP

1 PM:

South surface wind at 1 PM: 6 mph, 2000' 7 mph, 4000' south southeast 6 mph

TOL at 1 PM: 4,400'

Updraft Velocity at 1 pm: 580 fpm

CB at 1 PM: none (with south southeast there is almost always cu's)

B/S at 1 PM: 9.7

4 PM:

South surface wind at 4 PM: 6 mph, 6,000' 6 mph

TOL at 4 PM: 7,700'

Updraft Velocity at 4 PM: 720 fpm

CB at 4 PM: 7,500'

B/S at 4 PM: 10.0

The Task:

Quest 3 km
Turn33 3 km (Intersection of the Florida Turnpike and highway 33)
T33D 3 km (Intersection of Dean Still Road and highway 33)
Quest 400 m

Results for Open and Sport classes: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Task 3 Open: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5007/day/open-class

# Name Glider Time Total
1 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:24:22 991.2
2 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 02:24:24 981.9
3 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 02:24:32 973.1
4 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 02:25:03 963.5
5 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 02:25:27 958.0
6 Phill Bloom Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:26:24 931.8
7 Kevin Carter Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:27:05 920.9
8 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 02:30:02 900.3
9 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 02:30:47 898.2
10 Bruce Barmakian Aeros Combat 02:39:58 838.2

Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 928.2 980.4 898.2 2807
2 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 822.3 954.9 981.9 2759
3 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 806.6 941.6 991.2 2739
4 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 815.0 945.7 973.1 2734
5 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 779.4 991.7 900.3 2671
6 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 650.1 961.5 963.5 2575
7 Kevin Carter Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 655.4 865.4 920.9 2442
8 Raul Guerra Icaro Laminar 14.7 754.7 832.7 834.4 2422
9 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 634.3 580.8 958.0 2173
10 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 787.1 503.1 804.5 2095

Sport Cumulative:

# Name Glider T 1 T 2 T 3 Total
1 Tim Delaney Wills Wing Sport 3 135 828.3 954.8 504.2 2287
2 Ken Millard Moyes Gecko 155 624.4 598.6 986.6 2210
3 Douglas Hale Moyes Gecko 328.3 581.1 772.6 1682
4 Ric Caylor Moyes Gecko 170 137.6 989.3 475.5 1602
5 Abishek Sethi Wills Wing U2 145 563.4 547.4 462.5 1573
6 Richard Milla Wills Wing U2 145 624.4 533.6 411.9 1570
7 Attila Plasch WillsWing U2 285.5 479.2 704.7 1469
8 Soham Mehta Wills Wing U2 145 327.7 581.6 524.1 1433
9 Richard Sibley WW T2 144 450.6 361.3 350.6 1163
10 David Hayner Wills Wing Sport 3 155 247.0 438.6 475.1 1161

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 3 »

April 13, 2021, 10:16:54 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 3

Task 2, in the blue

competition|Filippo Oppici|Gary Anderson|John Simon|Kevin Carter|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Raul Guerra|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Zac Majors

Live and Replay Open task: https://airtribune.com/play/5004/2d

Results for Open and Sport classes:

https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results

Task 2 Open: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5004/day/open-class

# Name Glider Time Distance (km) Total
1 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 02:55:37 90.70 991.7
2 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 02:56:25 90.70 980.4
3 Robin Hamilton Aeros Combat 13 02:56:36 90.70 961.5
4 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 02:56:48 90.70 954.9
5 Pedro L. Garcia Wills Wing T3 144 02:56:55 90.70 945.7
6 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:56:58 90.70 941.6
7 Kevin Carter Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 03:15:26 90.70 865.4
8 Raul Guerra Icaro Laminar 14.7 03:22:46 90.70 832.7
9 Gary Anderson Wills Wing T3 144 85.53 591.0
10 John Simon Aeros Combat C 12.7 82.16 586.8

A blue day with a north wind and a mixed forecast that made us unsure if we would have a lot of lift or just a little. Later the day turned out very well with climbs to 6,000' and sustained 500 fpm.

The Sky Wants Us to Return

Mon, Apr 12 2021, 11:10:54 pm EDT

The forecast was an utter failure

competition|Davis Straub|Filippo Oppici|Kevin Carter|Larry Bunner|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|PG|Phill Bloom|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Zac Majors

We were confronted with a forecast that said we were going to get to only 3,000' and have really light lift. None of that was true but it made life difficult for the task committee. None the less with Larry Bunner's guidance we called a great task that took advantage of the superb conditions and got most of us back to Wilotree Park.

Now we have to be concerned about why the forecast was so wrong and how to deal with the fact that the forecast for Tuesday is similar. Likely we'll just grab another forecast from our set of models and also go with whatever Skew-T brews up for us.

Given our great uncertainty about the forecast we called for an elapsed task with no leading or arrival points. We were concerned that it would be difficult for pilots to hang around for an hour in poor conditions. As it turned out there was no reason for that.

I was about the third pilot to get hauled up as a few pilots in front of me backed out and went to the end. Phill Bloom was first off and I was hauled up right under him. We climbed right to cloud base at 4,100' and then sampled nearby clouds wondering who would go first. Raul left early.

Larry and I left a gaggle of about half a dozen of the top pilots to go to the next cloud just outside the start cylinder and got up back to cloud base. When they came to join us in the lift we headed back and got a later start time by about three minutes. We then caught back up with them.

The task was a bit complex:

There were cu's around and we just hopped from cu to cu, which is why we didn't follow straight along the course lines:

There was plenty of lift under most of the cu's and at one point it averaged 500 fpm for 3,500'.

The results can be found here: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5003/day/open-class

# Name Glider Time Total
1 Zac Majors Wills Wing T3 144 01:46:52 981.2
2 Kevin Dutt Aeros Combat C 13.5 02:04:54 804.8
3 Willy Dydo Wills Wing T3 136 02:05:27 800.3
4 Pedro L. garcia Wills Wing T3 144 02:06:40 790.5
5 Filippo Oppici Wills Wing T3 144 02:06:47 789.6
6 Tyler Borradaile Moyes RX 3.5 Pro 02:06:48 789.4
7 Austin Marshall Wills Wing T3 154 02:08:55 772.6
8 Larry Bunner Wills Wing T3 144 02:11:43 750.8
9 Davis Straub Wills Wing T3 144 02:13:13 739.2
10 Kevin Carter Tbd 02:15:57 718.5

Sport Class results here: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/results/task5002/day/sport-class

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/12.4.2021/17:08

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-national:US

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-open/

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2761334

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/league/world/2021/brand:all,cat:2,class:all,xctype:all,club:all

http://wxc.fai.org/module.php?id=22&date=20210405&gliderclass=hg1

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 1 »

April 11, 2021, 12:17:08 pm EDT

2021 Paradise Airsports Nationals - day 1

We have crushed the drought

Belinda Boulter|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|video

It's hard to believe that it will only be from one to two inches of rain today (Sunday).

We have not had anything like this in the five months that Belinda and I have been here:

Those folks staying in tents will be most unhappy. Looks like a warm day tomorrow, sunny, with a north wind.

The Sandhill Cranes can eat and drink at the same time:

https://vimeo.com/535653182 by Randee Azzar.

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Pilot Entry Fee Goes Up March 10th

March 7, 2021, 8:08:17 EST

Pilot Entry Fee Goes Up March 10th

$100 per competition

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021

https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/info/details__info

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/info/details__info

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A Near Cyber Death Experience

Wed, Mar 3 2021, 8:23:21 am EST

We almost lost it

COVID|Facebook|Oz Report|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Wilotree Park|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

You might have noticed that it's been a tough year for most of us. Hang gliding continued without many competitions which would have lead to gatherings which were either frowned upon or completely forbidden by the authorities. Here in Florida we continued life outside where it is is 19 times safer (https://bestlifeonline.com/coronavirus-indoors/). Due to travel restrictions we canceled the Sport Class, Rigid Wing and Women's Worlds as well as all the Nationals competitions. Same for Big Spring.

Now a year later we are planning for the 2021 Paradise Airsports and Wilotree Park Nationals in April to be run under COVID protocols with continued international travel restrictions: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/info and https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/info.

During the year of crises mode we also decided to move to a new web server to reduce our costs. This transition has not been without numerous glitches as the Oz Report is a complex web site. For example, yesterday the host automatically updated PHP which caused all sorts of problems for Scare. Hopefully over time the situation will stabilize.

At one point we considered just going strictly on Facebook which would relieve us of all the web hosting issues (the high cost being the primary concern). We also were getting most of our content via Facebook posts, so it made sense to go to our Facebook version of the Oz Report.

This would mean that we would drop our email push of Oz Report issues. Also, those who find Facebook objectionable would no longer get to see our content. After a few disappointing experiments we decided to leave well enough alone. There is a Facebook version of the Oz Report and a stand-alone version. Sometimes content from the Facebook version comes over to the stand-alone version.

You can just go to the Oz Report on Facebook and ignore your news feed: https://www.facebook.com/ozreport

We don't know where things stand with our readers. We've decided not to publish every weekday unless there is news every weekday. Before it was publish or perish five days a week for 24 years. Now we are taking a bit more relaxed attitude and publishing when something interesting is happening, and hopefully with a new year and good changes to our pandemic situation coming, there will be more interesting things happening.

Thanks to all the Oz Report readers for their support over the years.

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Dustin, Attila, and Butch at Sonora Wings

Thu, Feb 18 2021, 9:01:37 pm EST

Getting to 7,000'

Attila Plasch|Butch Peachy|Dustin Martin|PG|Sonora Wings

Attila Plasch «Attila Plasch» writes:

Guess who's flying a hang glider? It's a long drive back, but that's Dustin Martin flying a Falcon here. Oh yeah, he arrived here on his paraglider after launching South Mountain.

Top of lift today was about 7,000'. I flew concentric circles for over an hour and Butch Peachy flew from here at the Ak Chin Airport to the Ak-Chin Casino in Maricopa and back (26 km).

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The Florida 2021 Spring Competitions

January 19, 2021, 9:09:03 pm EST

The Florida 2021 Spring Competitions

They are happening

Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021

https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/info/details__info

April 10th through the 17th.

Competition flying 11th through the 17th.

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/info/details__info

April 18th through the 25th.

Competition flying April 19th through the 25th.

There will be plenty of social distancing and everything will take place outside.

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The Florida Competitions in 2021

November 27, 2020, 10:35:06 EST

The Florida Competitions in 2021

The new meet organizer

Belinda Boulter|Ben Dunn|COVID|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Risk Retention Group|USHPA|Wilotree Park

Stephan Mentler <team> writes:

To my fellow competition pilots, the Florida based hang gliding competitions - in April of next year - are moving forward pending official USHPA re-sanctioning.  This includes the Paradise Airports Nationals, Wilotree Park Nationals, and the 2nd FAI Sport Class World Championship.  The respective competition dates along with registration process is provided on the Airtribune sites.  

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/info

https://airtribune.com/2021-sport-world-championships/info

https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/info

The competition organization understands that there will remain many unknowns regarding COVID-19, even with the development and distribution of a vaccine.  Pilots who sign-up for a competition and submit payment will be entitled to a full refund of entry fees minus $3.00 (three dollars) or the foreign equivalent if they are unable to attend due to impacts of COVID-19.  This includes government-imposed travel restrictions, government-imposed restrictions on sporting events, surges in cases, pilot illness, pilot family member illness, etc.  The $3.00 (three dollars) is retained to pay for anticipated non-refundable Organizer competition expenses.
 
There are a couple of changes - other than the impacts of COVID-19 – from previous years of Florida hang gliding competitions.  The first and most impactful is the retirement of Davis and Belinda from official Organizing and Meet Directing duties.  As competition pilots, we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their personal sacrifice and doing what can be a thankless job.  Without their commitment to organizing the Spring Florida competitions from the Green Swamp Klassic to the Nationals series, I suspect that the Florida and Big Spring competitions would have died-out a long time ago.  Thankfully, they have volunteered to help the new organization team, as needed to get things going for next year.  
 
This gets us to our second change.  In my role as the primary Organizer for next year’s Florida competitions and also considering the long-term prospects for U.S. based race-to-goal competitions – I along with two other competition pilots founded a hang gliding competition specific non-profit organization - the Hang Glider Racing Association Corp (HGRAC), a registered Florida non-profit corporation.  This was done upon the advice of past and potentially future organizers and several attorneys.  
 
A little background - some of the requirements enacted by the Risk Retention Group (RRG), for a competition to be insured, transfers a substantial level of risk to competition organizers.  This includes the potential for the RRG to refuse coverage for incidents that would be beyond the control of the organizer.  Without the creation of a competition specific organization as an additional protection for organizers, it is unlikely that anyone would have stepped in to organize another hang gliding race-to-goal competition in the U.S.  To be fair, the RRG has been made aware of the concerns and their leadership is working to resolve them – but in the interim - the HGRAC will be the entity under which I along with one or two other potential hang gliding competition organizers will organize U.S. based race-to-goal hang gliding competitions.
 
The HGRAC is currently composed of a president and two Directors.  The two Directors are Ben Dunn and Cory Barnwell.  Ben is a former multi-year Open Class U.S. National Team member and Cory is an experienced Open and Sport Class competition pilot.  We will be looking to appoint additional Directors if and as the HGRAC evolves.   

The comp organization email address is <team>.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

November 5, 2019, 8:16:32 PST

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

First 100 kilometer cross country flight

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|PG|record|USHPA

https://issuu.com/us_hang_gliding_paragliding/docs/ushpapilot1904_issu_68d23770c1b65a/52

On March 24, 2019 I flew my first 100-kilometer XC flight. It was a big day for me as a developing pilot, with personal records set and many lessons learned. Fortunately, none of the lessons were the kind that lead to unwanted landings in strange fields or send you to Urgent Care. It was a very good day.

I began entering competitions in 2018, starting In March with the Green Swamp Sport Klassic. The Green Swamp is a sport-class competition that matches intermediate pilots with mentors who coach them through a week of cross-country flying in a competition environment. As an Oregon Hang-3 pilot flying some fairly tricky local sites, I was at the frustrating cusp where I didn’t have the thermaling skills to get high enough and far enough to find more thermals and improve my thermaling and XC skills. The Green Swamp looked like the perfect crucible to move my game up a notch.

Green Swamp 2018 was great. I had my first out-landings (disregarding landing on the wrong beach in 2006). I flew 40 km on my best day. I never made goal. With the encouragement of other pilots and bolstered by great experiences, I proceeded to compete in sport-class competitions in Texas, Arizona, and Mexico. “Compete” is a strong word, as I never made goal and always finished in the bottom 25%. With my intermediate XC skills, I thought of myself as more of a “participant.”

March of 2019 found me back in Florida for my second Green Swamp. Not wanting to ship my glider across the country again, I purchased a new Moyes Gecko to fly and store in Florida. Saturday I took two short test flights on my new glider, which went very smoothly.

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The cost of getting you in the air

Mon, Apr 8 2019, 7:46:39 am EDT

At the 2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|Jim Prahl|tow

Jim Prahl «Jim Prahl

Total income. $7,677.00

Tow fees expenses. There were some fees/ accounting with Square so the numbers are slightly off on the total income. Off by $27.00

Plane Fuel $693.54
Tug Pilots(4) $2,800.00 $(700.00 each for the meet)
Tow planes (4). $4,000.00 (Tow planes usually cost $2,000.00 - $2,500.00 per meet)

For this meet tow plane owners get $1,000.00 each for the meet) Normally for up to 20 paying pilots we would have used two planes and tow to 2,000.00-2,500 feet.

So the tug owners received significantly less than what they would normally expect for a meet with actually 18 paying pilots and 11 non paying mentors. It was originally assumed that we would use three tugs and three pilots, but we turned out to need to use four even though pilots were supposed to be restricted to one tow to 4,000' only so as to not have to do continual relights for sport class pilots.

Pilot tow fee was $425.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

April 1, 2019, 7:47:12 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

People told us that they had a great time

Belinda Boulter|Bob "Skydog" Grant|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019

There were 29 pilots including eleven mentors, and 29 volunteers, tug pilots, and others that contributed to the meet.

Our co-organizer and safety director for the GSSK:

Thanks to Bob Grant.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 30, 2019, 11:54:40 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Task 5

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|PG|weather|Wilotree Park

With this forecast we called a straight task to the Leeward Airfield to the north northwest:

https://ozreport.com/seweather.php

Saturday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 82. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph in the morning.
Surface winds, 7 mph, southeast

HRRR 3, 2 PM:

Updraft velocity: 735 fpm
TOL: 6,300’
Wind TOUL: 1 mph, south
Surface winds: 7 mph, southeast
B/S: 10
Cloudbase 6,300’, 43 degrees

The winds at 2,000' and 4,000' looked to be 9 to 10 mph out of the southeast. The TOL winds forecast appeared to be an anomaly.

The winds were 8 to 9 mph out of the southeast as we launched.

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2233298

My mentees were Richard Westmoreland and Stephan Mentler and we along with Mitch Shipley's crew climbed up at over 300 fpm to over 6,000' under a dark cu that had just formed over Wilotree Park. I pinned off early as I couldn't see the point of towing out of the lift, so I would have to climb up below my mentees who got to 6,400'.

The sky was once again full of cu's and we were once again quite high so it was time to head to the northwest following the cloud street a little west of the course line. We told pilots at the pilot meeting to go up to 9 km west of the course line for the best route (generally), but, of course, follow the clouds.

It was a 9 km glide to the nursery west northwest of Mascotte, where we climbed at 270 fpm on average together to 5,600'. I headed out in front to find the next lift and lost 2,000' in 9 km at the southeast end of the forested area south of the prisons. I was working 50 fpm when I spotted Richard twirling upwind of me coming my way. I joined him lift we averaged 600 fpm to 6,400'. Stephan came in under us but didn't find that strong core.

I headed out again toward the prisons under the cloud street. I had advised pilots to stay east of the prison and not over the forested area. We flew to the west side of the prisons and right over the forested area because that's where the clouds were. 9 km later I was back down to 3,700' on the south side of the prisons. Richard would come along three minutes later only 300' lower.

We spent over 20 minutes working cruddy lift to 5,200' for Richard and 6,100' for me. We hooked up with Mitch and Jon Irlbeck who we had passed early in the light after they launched right in front of us. Everyone was just climbing way too slowly for my comfort. Stephan came in under us but did not spend 20 minutes climbing in the cruddy lift.

I headed out with Richard behind to the north northwest toward the nearest next cloud. I found the tiniest amount of lift. Richard turned to the north northeast just before I got to the cloud. He was at 3,200'. I was at 4,600'. I headed north as he headed across the Turnpike toward the town of Wildwood to my east about a kilometer.

A three kilometer glide and I found 160 fpm at 4,000' (losing only 600') as I kept my eye on my mentee. I was soon to hear that Stephan had landed south of the Turnpike after losing patience with the awful lift.

Richard went right over the packed residential area of Wildwood at 2,500'. Over down town at 1,500' (no nearby landing areas). He was just west of the railroad tracks at 1,000'. I could see his dark shadow below him.

It looked to me viewing from the west a kilometer and climbing above 4,000' that he would land on a clearing at the edge of the railroad track. Nope, he was 400' AGL.

He went over a small field surrounded by trees and two buildings and averaged zero climb for a few turns and then dropping out of the lift, went north to a good field and landed. I frankly could not believe it. There is no way I would have gone in that direction over the town at that altitude. If he had just gone north with me he would have found wide open fields and the opportunity to climb back up again.

I spotted Mitch and Jon upwind of me and went back to help Jon. But he was climbing so slowly that I figured that Mitch could continue with him and I went off looking for other mentees as mine had both landed. I just had not been enough help for them.

I found another mentee just to the north and he was doing okay. I showed him where the good lift was but he insisted on flying upwind while the thermal drifted to the north. Okay, I see that I can't help you even though you can see me turning.

I found 300 fpm a little further north climbed up and zoomed into goal.

A whole bunch of pilots made goal, although Jon was not quite there.

We decided to score the ATOS gliders separately without a handicap. Oded and Jim Kolynich kindly agreed to that. We would have done this initially but Jim flew his Sport 3 on the first days before switching.

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

Task 5:

# Name Nat Glider Time Distance Total
1 Richard Milla GBR Wills Wing U2 145 02:12:37 62.50 1000
2 Richard Caylor USA Moyes Gecko 170 02:19:12 62.50 921
3 Soham Mehta IND Wills Wing U2 145 02:25:46 62.50 875
4 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145 02:43:30 62.50 778
5 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155   48.90 520

Final:

# Name Nat Glider Total
1 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155 2351
2 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145 2350
3 Richard Caylor USA Moyes Gecko 170 2292
4 Richard Milla GBR Wills Wing U2 145 2094
5 Stephan Mentler USA Icaro MastR 2040
6 John Alden USA Wills Wing U2 145 2012
7 Richard Westmoreland USA Wills Wing U2 145 1978
8 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155 1916
9 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept 1828
10 Soham Mehta IND Wills Wing U2 145 1754

A one point difference between first and second place.

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 30, 2019, 9:42:42 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Follow the tracks from task 4 and 5

https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/GSSK2019/task4/

https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/GSSK2019/task5/

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 29, 2019, 11:20:12 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Going west

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|PG

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2231658

http://wxc.fai.org/module.php?id=22&date=20190330&gliderclass=hg1

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/29.3.2019/18:18

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-national:US

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 29, 2019, 10:44:58 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Task 4, Lake effect

April Mackin|competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden|Mark Dowsett|Wilotree Park

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

Thank goodness we are being towed to 4,000'. I hadn't taken advantage of this, but today I did because I needed the altitude to get me and Jon Irlbeck, my mentee, out and away from Wilotree Park. In a hurry.

At the Green Swamp we launch as teams. Our team, Ken Millard, Mark Dowsett, mentor, Jon Irlbeck, and me, additional floating mentor, were second to last to launch an hour after the launch window opened. For the first time in the first hours three pilots suddenly landed back at Wilotree Park just as we were getting up to the launch box. Jim Kolynich on an ATOS got really low but recovered.

There were plenty of cu's before, but now it was blue to the east. I said to those around me, "Lake Effect." This means that the big lakes to the east are cutting off the lift. The wind was out of the east at about 9 mph.

Ken and Mark were launched then after a little wait, Jon and I. April Mackin towed me up brilliantly right behind Jon and when we got near 4,000' she put me next to Jon. I pinned of at 3,900' just below Jon and upwind a bit, but before I did I told him on the radio to turn and go west, immediately, as fast as he could.

As we were towing up we passed through Mark and Ken over Wilotree Park at 2,000'. They would soon land.

Unlike most mentees, Jon immediately followed my admonition and we were soon rewarded with light lift. It wasn't great but at least we were going up and not landing back at Wilotree Park. This was the key that set the day up for Jon.

I found -15 fpm, then 65 fpm, and finally 150 fpm on my way to the first turnpoint at the intersection of highway 50 and 469, 12 km from the start point. I circled into the turnpoint at 3,800'.

Heading downwind down the course line I could see that the lumber yard, the second turnpoint, was in the middle of a large area of shade. There was a huge dark cloud centered right over it. To the north there were other cu's and lots of sunlight on the ground. I could see a very small fire with much more smoke than fire and near by a nice looking, very dark, but smallish cu. I don't have a lot of luck finding lift over fires, especially very small one, but as it was closer than the cu, I headed for it first.

Down to 2,600' I found 300 fpm over it and drifted downwind with the thermal. Drifting a little further downwind I ran into 800 fpm on my 20 second averager under the dark cu. It looked like Jim Kolynich saw that I was climbing and came in way low below me. It looked like I was getting to help two mentors. Jon could hear me on the radio calling out lift and position.

I was going to blow off the second turnpoint at the lumber yard as I had already drifted downwind and being a mentor I was not being scored, but with this big climb I saw no reason not to go back upwind and from 3 km passed the turnpoint cylinder tag it before heading for the next one. Besides, I might run into Jon or another menteee that I could help.

It cost me only 1,400'.  I came back downwind to get under Jim who had climbed up in the meantime. Kolynich flew off, but I was soon back to 5,500'.

Heading toward the third turnpoint at the Gross airfield I could see that there was a lot of blue on the way. There were cu's to the south of the course line, but with the 13 mph wind they were moving away from me quickly. I had to turn a bit to the north to be sure to tag the turnpoint before I blew past it (like the last one), but that sent me into the blue. I was looking to the west at the river surrounded by trees up ahead.

There was a nice looking black cu downwind of the turnpoint and a few fields that I go use for landing just before the river. Down to 1,800' I came in under the upwind side of the good looking cu and bam there was 600 fpm. The rough thermal averaged 500 fpm and I took it to 4,500', which was more than enough to get over all the trees to the west and into goal.

Oded was there when I got there, but I wasn't pleased with the field that he landed in so landed further west in a field with some random small trees that didn't provide too many obstacles. It was great to see that Jon Irlbeck made it later, for his first goal finish. Looks like a number of Mentees made it in.

Task 4:

# Name Glider Time Distance Total
1 Oded Kalir Atos VQ 01:01:19 52.48 619
2 Stephan Mentler Icaro MastR 01:35:44 52.48 611
3 Jon Irlbeck Wills Wing Sport 2 155 02:09:54 52.48 516
4 Richard Caylor Moyes Gecko 170   34.10 401
5 James Kolynich ATOS 01:44:12 52.48 398

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Total
1 Ken Millard Moyes Gecko 155 1611
2 John Alden Wills Wing U2 145 1608
3 Jon Irlbeck Wills Wing Sport 2 155 1476
4 Abhishek Sethi Wills Wing U2 145 1440
5 Oded Kalir Atos VQ 1422
6 Richard Westmoreland Wills Wing U2 145 1357
7 Philipp Neumann Airwave Concept 1339
8 Stephan Mentler Icaro MastR 1274
9 Richard Caylor Moyes Gecko 170 1217
10 Rick Maddy Wills Wing U2 160 1030

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 28, 2019, 9:25:26 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Again strong winds

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|weather

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|weather

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|weather

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

Forecast in the morning:

https://ozreport.com/seweather.php

Thursday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 78. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.

Surface winds 17 mph gusting to 24 mph northeast

HRRR 3, 2 PM:

Updraft velocity: 775 fpm
TOL: 6,600’
Wind TOUL: 24 mph, northeast
Surface winds: 14 mph, northeast
B/S: 5.8

Cloudbase 6,000’, 40 degrees

The winds at the Leesburg airfield during the day:

Time Wind
5 PM E 13 G 23
4 PM NE 18 G 23
3 PM NE 21 G 26
2 PM NE 17 G 23
1 PM NE 16 G 21
Noon NE 17 G 23

We decided to wait until Friday and Saturday to continue the competition. The forecast on Thursday night:

Friday

Sunny, with a high near 81. East wind 5 to 10 mph.

Surface winds 8 - 9 mph east northeast

HRRR 3, 2 PM:

Updraft velocity: 755 fpm
TOL: 7,000’
Wind TOUL: 10 mph, east northeast
Surface winds: 9 mph, east northeast
B/S: 10
Cloudbase 6,600’

Saturday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 84. Calm wind becoming east around 5 mph in the morning.

Surface winds 6 mph east southeast decreasing to 3 mph

NAM 12, 2 PM:

Updraft velocity: 675 fpm
TOL: 6,000’
Wind TOUL: 3 mph, south southwest
Surface winds: 2 mph, southeast
B/S: 10
Cloudbase, 5,300’

Still a possible around the Green Swamp day.

We look forward to the forecasted great conditions.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 27, 2019, 9:27:40 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Practice day video

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|video

https://youtu.be/2D-qk22oKgE

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 27, 2019, 2:08:44 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Follow the tracks from day 3

Main Page: https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/

https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/GSSK2019/task3/

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 27, 2019, 9:22:10 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Rain and high winds

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

The day is canceled early due to rain and forecast for high winds. The high winds and gusts are already being reported just to our north at the Leesburg airport.

The pilots flying down to Wallaby Ranch on Tuesday.

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 26, 2019, 10:09:10 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Day three results

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|USHPA|Wilotree Park

First of all thanks so much to our sponsors who are providing the day prizes for the sport pilots: Flytec, Moyes, Wills Wing, the USHPA, Stephan Mentler, and the Flying Gypsies. Also thanks to all our volunteers, as many as their are pilots (not including the mentors) and thanks to all our volunteer mentors, who are doing the work of getting their pilots to goal.

Here was "my" forecast for the day:

Mostly sunny, with a high near 81. West northwest wind 5 to 10 mph.
Surface winds 10 mph at 2 pm, west northwest from noon until 7 PM

HRRR 3, 2 PM:

Updraft velocity: 800 fpm
TOL: 7,300’
Wind TOUL: 20 mph, west
Surface winds: 11 mph, west northwest
B/S: 7.6

Skew-T: Cloudbase: 5,500’, 49 degrees

With strong west winds it can be turbulent getting out of the field heading west from the east launch. Fortunately the winds were more in the range of 6 mph on the ground. Some pilots had turbulent tows, others, like me, had very smooth tows.

Tim took me right up a line of lift, registering 900 fpm on a tug that can only climb at 400 fpm. I pinned off a little above two thousand feet less than a kilometer on the upwind side of Wilotree Park and starting circling in about 200 fpm lift while drifting quickly to the southeast.  Other pilots, who were being towed to four thousand feet, were being towed far to the west past Osborn field to get them upwind.

The cu's were lined up and there was lots of vertical development which leads to black cloud bottoms. We haven't seen such development so far this year.

My radio battery was on the fritz, so I couldn't track my mentees.  I watched the pilots out to the west struggle as I climbed to 3,300' near cloudbase.

The wind was about 8 mph out of the west northwest. I pushed upwind to work weak lift, less than or about 100 fpm, staying above 3,000' and working my way up a few hundred feet in each thermal before proceeding again south and west to the next good looking cu.

I spotted Mitch Shipley with a mentee or maybe two (one was very low) a little further to the southwest. This was my chance to get into the game of helping a mentee or two. I found lift before I got to them and climbed to 3,900' with them just below me.

I headed up under a dark cloud street to get upwind as far as possible and to stay high as I watched them climb downwind of me. I waited until they got high and both came toward me.

I flew back to them but only spotted the mentee. I headed out and he followed. It was a mistake to not find Mitch, but perhaps he went back to his mentee who was low, but soon landed.

The mentee followed me to his doom. I headed for the next dark cloud but unlike in the first part of the flight it was too far away. He pealed off as I got down to 1,500' on the east side of the Green Swamp under broken clouds with the dark cloud more upwind.

As I watched him land I headed back down wind and not finding anything landed near highway 33 in a huge field with no noticeable wind at all (and none during the whole time I took to break down).

Mitch stayed up and was able to make it to goal at Wallaby (there was a 5 km turnpoint cylinder around the intersection of highways 474 and 33). A couple of the mentees also made it to goal, with Richard Milla winning the day and Oded Kalir in second.

We were originally quite concerned that the west winds would lead to too much turbulence coming out of the field, but that was not the case in general. The strong lift did cause turbulence on tow to a few pilots.

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

Task 3:

# Name Nat Glider Time Distance Total
1 Richard Milla GBR Wills Wing U2 145 01:11:47 33.08 329
2 Oded Kalir USA Atos VQ 01:17:25 33.08 217
3 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145   17.27 177
4 Richard Caylor USA Moyes Gecko 170   15.13 166
5 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept   7.30 119
5 Rick Maddy USA Wills Wing U2 160   7.22 119
7 Soham Mehta IND Wills Wing U2 145   7.00 118
8 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155   6.50 114

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider Total
1 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155 1278
2 John Alden USA Wills Wing U2 145 1121
3 Bent Kaaber USA Wills Wing U2 899
4 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145 867
5 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept 838
6 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155 793
7 Richard Westmoreland USA Wills Wing U2 145 786
8 Richard Milla GBR Wills Wing U2 145 713
9 Oded Kalir USA Atos VQ 695
10 Stephan Mentler USA Icaro MastR 578

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 26, 2019, 9:44:22 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

The tracks reviewed

Task 1 and 2 maps have been posted:

Main Page: https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/

Task 1: https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/GSSK2019/task1/

Task 2: https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/GSSK2019/task2/

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 26, 2019, 7:53:42 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Day two

Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden|Larry Bunner

Bobby Bailey|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden|Larry Bunner

We had a forecast of southwest winds turning west as the day wore on. Less than 10 mph on the ground, but up to almost 20 mph west up above near cloudbase. The forecast also called for good lift and cu's and cloudbase around 5,000', so a good day. But we were perplexed as to where to launch from.

Bobby Bailey said launch from the northeast corner as the wind kept coming much more from the south than the southwest or west and that is what we did. We got off all the competitors before the wind went strong from the west and launched everyone else from the east end of the east/west runway.

It's still taking a long time to launch everyone and drag them to 4,000'. Most of the mentors get off early and climb up. I took two flights as after climbing up to 2,400' on the first flight. I then went up wind and didn't find anything.

A good number of pilots got up and out. A number landed back at Wilotree. The lift was broken and often not that strong in the wind. I only experienced at 9 mph out of the west in the air.

The task was to go north to a turnpoint at the Turnpike and highway 33 and Larry Bunner mentioned that as he headed north he had a tail wind, which then became a quartering tail wind from the south west and then was a cross wind from the west as the day proceeded. The second leg was to the south east to Gator field. A short task but we can hardly go east at all given the Orlando airspace.

None of the mentees made it to goal although Mitch and Fabiano did. Larry who almost made goal said that he saw Mick over goal but he hadn't made the turnpoint yet. The wind was much more west later in the day and Mick launched almost last.

John Alden won the day with Mitch hanging with him most of the way.

The lift was pretty broken up and weak, both times I flew. Mitch had to dig himself back out from not finding lift after getting over 5,000' over Wilotree Park and then heading upwind into nothing (which is what I did also, but from a lot lower). Larry Bunner reported 700 fpm early in his flight. The changing wind direction no doubt was a factor in the changing climb rates.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 26, 2019, 7:53:17 EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Results from the first two days

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

Task 2:

# Name Nat Glider Distance Total
1 John Alden USA Wills Wing U2 145 23.19 356
2 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept 22.70 351
3 Richard Westmoreland USA Wills Wing U2 145 21.55 336
4 Soham Mehta IND Wills Wing U2 145 15.44 254
5 Richard Caylor USA Moyes Gecko 170 11.67 216
6 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155 10.76 204
7 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155 8.99 180
8 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145 7.66 160
9 Richard Milla GBR Wills Wing U2 145 5.22 119
10 Attila Plasch USA Moyes Litesport 4 5.00 115

Cumulative:

# Name Nat Glider Total
1 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155 1180
2 John Alden USA Wills Wing U2 145 1064
3 Bent Kaaber USA Wills Wing U2 799
4 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept 760
5 Richard Westmoreland USA Wills Wing U2 145 726
6 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145 702
7 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155 692
8 Oded Kalir USA Atos VQ 475
9 Stephan Mentler USA Icaro MastR 473
10 Rick Maddy USA Wills Wing U2 160 425

Yes, John Alden was second on the first day.

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 25, 2019, 7:24:37 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Just before the start

Belinda Boulter|Bob "Skydog" Grant|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019

The bonfire, goes every night, thanks to Flying Gypies:

Photo by Belinda Boulter, the Safety Director for the Green Swamp Sport Klassic.

The practice day, photo by Bob Grant.

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2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic »

March 25, 2019, 6:19:04 pm EDT

2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

First day preliminary results

competition|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|John Alden

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/results

# Name Nat Glider Time Distance Total
1 Ken Millard USA Moyes Gecko 155 03:12:36 103.25 1000
2 Bent Kaaber USA Wills Wing U2   73.26 686
3 Abhishek Sethi IND Wills Wing U2 145   55.44 562
4 Jon Irlbeck USA Wills Wing Sport 2 155   42.01 507
5 Oded Kalir USA Atos VQ   72.43 477
6 Philipp Neumann GER Airwave Concept   35.70 434
7 Richard Westmoreland USA Wills Wing U2 145   33.38 416
8 Rick Maddy USA Wills Wing U2 160   25.25 346
9 James Kolynich USA Wills Wing Sport 3 135   23.14 338
10 Attila Plasch USA Moyes Litesport 4   21.05 301

John Alden hasn't sent in his track log yet and was probably second or third.

Flying to Williston

Mon, Mar 25 2019, 9:23:16 am EDT

The first task for the 2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

John Alden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2226062

http://wxc.fai.org/module.php?id=22&date=20190325&gliderclass=hg1

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/24.3.2019/18:11

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-national:US

We got one sport class pilot to goal, Ken Millard on a Gecko, a number of others close.

I joined the team with Mitch Shipley as the mentor, John Alden and Rick Maddy.

I was off at the front of the team. I should have launched after the others because although I got off way early at 1,300', I circled up to over 5,000' at cloud base and drifted far to the northwest. Mitch made it up with me and then went back to join the mentees over Wilotree Park. They were let off of tow at 4,000'. I drifted out ahead and reported back the lift values and top of lift. The wind was 10 to 13 mph out of the southeast.

Pilots were scattered due to the amount of time taken to get each team up to 4,000'. The sky was full of good looking cu's and it was easy to connect up with the lift. as I headed northwest over open lands toward the prisons. After climbing up at the Okahumpka service plaza on the Florida Turnpike I headed west northwest to get under darker looking clouds by Coleman. There are fewer landing areas there but the clouds looked good.

The lift was less than 50 fpm. I was down to 3,200' and headed north after some fruitless turning. The mentees were just south of the prisons. It looked like I could make a landing field just east of the intersection of interstate 75 and the Turnpike. When I got there there was a little lift which quickly disappeared.

Down to 1,400' and dropping at over 400 fpm I headed toward more open fields that promised easy landing. At 600' with a 12 mph southeast wind I noticed a bit of lift over two sets of high tension power lines. I turned. For the first minute there was no gain in altitude, but I had quit falling at 400 fpm. Slowly I began to climb and drift toward additional open fields.

Behind me Rick was going down near the prisons. Mitch was climbing out from less than 1000' after going out in front of the mentees to find lift.

The lift slowly improved and I was able to climb to 3,500' before shifting over to the west a bit and then climbing to 5,400'. I was south of Marion Oaks and Mitch was just 5 kilometers behind with John Alden.

Down to 3,100' within the south side of Marion Oaks with possible landing fields far away I found more lift and soon was flying between 5,200' and 6,200' as cloud base was rising. It was easy to get over the trees and housing developments to get the turnpoint 7 kilometers around Dunellon. John Alden would land near the optimized waypoint around Dunellon not much later.

The sea breeze was beginning to influence the air and the cu's. I was right on the edge of it so the air turned a little bit turbulent. Soon after the turnpoint I climbed to 5,800' and went on glide to goal. Mitch wasn't too far behind. A bunch of mentors made it to goal and one mentee, Ken Millard on his new Moyes Gecko.

We rushed out of the goal field to go get John Alden. Unfortunately, he had landed two miles behind a locked gate. We walked quickly west into the sunset with my kayak carrier wheels and Mitch and I ran back with the glider and harness. John, with his bad knees, took longer to get through the four gates, and it was pitch black before we were on the road again. We picked up Stephane Mentler after he waited 4 hours a little closer to Wilotree Park. Got home at 10:30 PM.

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Prepping for the 2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:44:46 am EST

Checking out the tracks from 2018

Eduardo Fonseca|Airtribune|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|IGC

Fonseca, Eduardo «eduardo.fonseca-1

In prep for the GSSK comp I built this map views with the IGC tracks for the top 5 pilots from the 2018 GSSK edition. Airtribune tracking/map features just doesn’t work for me at all, so I built my own (more portable than Google Earth and mobile-friendly). Hopefully Live Tracking some day.

https://f0n.github.io/GSSK/

We'll have an approximation of live tracking for the GSSK.

https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/info/details__info

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Sport 3 and Gecko Pilots

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:44:12 am EST

Come fly in Sport Class

Quest Air|USHPA|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019

The Sport Class is getting very popular. Pilots love flying the king posted gliders with their easy handling and landing characteristics. Many pilots are turning to these gliders to make flying more fun.

If you are a Gecko or Sport 3 pilot (or you fly any other king posted glider) you might think about flying in Sport Class Competitions. There are plenty of them, not just here in the US, but world wide. Sport Class competition builds camaraderie and all the pilots appear to love doing it.

Check out the Green Swamp Sport Klassic: https://airtribune.com/2019-green-swamp-sport-klassic/info/details__info as well as the other comps linked to here: https://OzReport.com/Ourcompetitions.php. There will also be sport class competitions in the US here: https://airtribune.com/east-coast-championship-2019/info/details__info and https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-mark-knight-memorial-2019/info/details__info.

Sport Class rules for our competitions:

Pilot qualification: Pilots must meet the requirements of minimum hang 3 rating; as well as aerotow (AT), turbulence (TURB) and cross country (XC) sign offs. Aerotow rating or evidence of extensive aerotowing experience. USHPA membership will be required (temporary 30-day memberships will be available at minimal cost on site).

Pilots must not have been listed in the top twenty US pilots since January 2008 for entry into sport class. Pilots must not have finished in the top ⅔rd's of a non-Sport Class Category 1 competition held since January 2014, for entry into sport class.

The Sport Class competitions at the Quest Air Nationals are the pre-Worlds for the 2020 Sport Class Worlds.

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