ECC day 2

[mcelrah]

(Day 1 was blown out.) Booming conditions today. Rowdiest tow of my life. Weak link break at 50 feet. On relight, I had to pin off at 1400 'cause I was high on the tug and locking out. Dug it out from 900 to 5000. Went about 22 miles, almost 10 miles short of the Sport class goal, but happy. Dullahan was about 3 miles behind me, Joe Gregor a couple miles further downwind (not necessarily much closer to goal). "I follow roads" remember? - go down 404 till 13, then take a right - but that's where most of us got scraped off. Time for beauty sleep... - Hugh

[mcelrah]

Day 3 (Tuesday): another booming day, started out blue, but there were lines of wispies possibly associated with the convergence between the NW wind and the sea breeze east of Ridgely. Another rowdy tow, but my weak link held (Carlos' did not). I think I was the last in the launch line at 1:50 PM, and he was behind me with his relight. Adam dropped me in a thermal at 2100 and I initially got up to about 4200, but spent a long time (half hour) searching between 2-3000 as I slowly blew past Denton. A free flyer operating nearby found a thermal when I really needed one and I started to benefit from the more generalized lift/zero sink of the convergence. I could see across the Delaware Bay to Cape May, Cape Henlopen and the tall buildings of Rehoboth. I arrived at goal (a defunct small airport SW of Georgetown DE (36 miles from Ridgely) with 5000 and decided to continue down the Open class task line. While I was messing with the GPS setting up the new waypoint, I gained another 500 feet. But once on the more southerly course, I lost the lift, saw a couple of gliders in a big field a couple of miles south of the airport, realized I was tired after 2+ hours and that my hands were cold even though I was wearing gloves and a jacket (57 degrees at altitude). Carlos and John Dullahan also made goal, as did Danny Brotto (Sport class - a number of people in Open class made goal another 30 or so miles further - results are at soaringspot.com). It took a long time to get down (I arrived at the landing zone with 1900) because the convergence was still working pretty hard - at one point I was down to 750 and found my boxing the field inadvertently became turning in working lift back up to 1300. Tomorrow is looking like blown/rained out; I came home and will go to work to save a day of leave.
- Hugh