As the aircraft were being readied for flight, several stories started to float around the field. It seems the team of Pasi Pulkkinen & Teronen (Finland) lost their
LX-9000 and associated vario while on task. Not to be deterred, Pasi and his co-pilot pulled out their standby nav system (iPhone & Google maps) and completed the task with no problem. Who needs a $10,000 navigation system anyway. Ms. Miranda, our very able host for coffee in the morning pilot’s brief, had a slight accident on the way to the meeting. Apparently, she had to brake a little harder than normal and tipped over the coffee urn in the back of her truck. No damage to anything but her ego as we did not have coffee this morning.
As the pilots meeting continued, it was brought out that some gliders were spending too much time on the taxiway after landing. Funny thing is, we saw that from the glider parking area ourselves. One pilot stopped on the taxiway, got out of the ship and started fussing with his nav system, probably downloading his flight to send it into the scorer. That did not impress the pilot who landed and had to exit the taxiway early.
The weather briefers went over the difference from the expected weather to what really occurred yesterday. The weaker conditions to the east were caused by blow off from storms to the northeast and the high that directed the cirrus to the 18 Meter class first turnpoint. None of the models caught this and it was not expected. Today the weather is expected to be better than yesterday. It will be bluer than previous days, but we may have some cu in the afternoon. There is little chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon since the airmass is very dry. We should see climbs to 10k up north and 7-8,000ft to the south.
As always, we did have some issues with weather at the launch. The sniffer was launched around 1pm and his first climb was 5kts. Mark asked him to find one more climb. Try as he could, the sniffer could not find another climb for an hour. The launch started very late and there was a real worry that no one would make it back. We even had some social media posts from the competitors that relayed that sentiment. I am sure that there were Team Captains shaking their heads. Frankly, I was a little hesitant to think everyone would return to Uvalde this afternoon. Well, the gliders are getting close to final glide and I’m going to greet them in the parking area and find out what the day really was like.
Stay turned latter on for the results and how the day went for the pilots.
Cheers,
Rich Owen
Media Team
