2M Challenge No. 1 06/03/12

Awsome day for soaring!
What a day for soaring! Absolutely, God given, fabulous conditions. The wind varied from decidedly breezy to neary calm throughout the day. The sun was a bit hot but lunch under the canopy was perfect. Birds marked lift occassionally and wind shifts signaled the draw of a thermal (or thermals) during the rounds.

We flew seven rounds of 7 minute duration with 25′ AMA landing tapes. A lot of maxes were recorded but sometimes flying around the thermals seemed expedient and shorter times were recorded.

Unfortunately Gordon was having a very rough day. First his Duck dove into the woods with a dead battery. Then his backup, a Sagitta 600 shed some wing covering on launch. He tried to fly it out and went downwind with some lift and everything seemed good. Alas, when he turned for home the plane looked like it was flying in some of the worst sink I’ve ever seen and didn’t make it back to the field. Ever one to soldier on, when the plane was retrieved Gordon used packing tape to patch it up and continued to fly.

If you missed it you missed a beautiful day. I’ll post the scores tomorrow. I don’t know about anyone else but I had a really good time.
Rick Eckel


Rick Yes it was a great day for soaring indeed and the Barr Street flying field continues to be an excellent venue for Buzzards contests with the club now having access to the field with vehicles under special permit allowing much more convenient setting up from our vehicles etc. Thanks Raed for achieving that with the State Parks people.
The lift was made in heaven with relative easy reads early on but getting more difficult as the day developed along with the sink cycles. AS Rick said, I lament my lack of attention once again to battery condition and after a nice 6 minute ride in Rd 2 – I was descending to prepare for my landing when my beloved Duck decided to descend vertically from about 200 feet. The resulting sound of veneer and foam and Kevlar contacting tree branches about 200 yards downwind didn’t fullfil my desire to have a good scoring day. In any case my backup Sagitta 600 was a good ship, and gave me a good max and landing 1st launch but it’s second launch saw a piece of red covering separate from the aircraft and in spite of my attempt to complete the max I discovered it was a brick when I flew away from the lift so she too fell at an alarming angle into the treed area of our park.
Two zeros made for a poor score but I still had a bunch of fun and Tom and Raed were also working their Sprites in the great conditions. It was a terrific soaring day and we are sorry more of you 2M sailplane aficionados couldn’t have enjoyed the fun and camaraderie with us. Come out and join us at the next one in 3 weeks time June 23rd at the IRKS field in Cocoa.
Gordon
Score Sheet Round by Round 2012 – 2M challenge June 3rd


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