Nordics – Day 3

Today we had nice blue skies again, with a front predicted to come in by noon. We first got a 92 km task towards the NE, but it was changed to a 55km straight line to goal at Sala. I was drawn late in the take off line, and got a tow straight through sink all the way to 600 meters. I searched around the golf course but had to glide back to the airstrip for another tow. After waiting in line for 45 minutes I got the next tow. This time I decided to go for it no matter what, as the cirrus was building and shading the area around the airstrip. I got down to 250 meters as I crossed the start circle, and worked it up to cloudbase, slowly at 0,2 m/s at first, and getting near 3 m/s at cloudbase. Base was at 1500 meters today, much better than yesterday.

I crossed over to the next good looking cloudstreet, found a nice 4 m/s thermal at the same spot I landed on day 1. Approaching cloudbase it started to rain, and the area over to the next good looking clouds was in shade. It continued to rain, and I flew through lots of sink as the glider got really wet. I could see water flowing off the trailing edge, and there was some hail as well just to make it really nice for us pilots, glad I had my new helmet with visir. A swedish pilot on a Climax glided with me, we aimed for the next area with some sun on the ground, but it was in shade before we could make it out of the rain. I arrived with 100 meters above a nice big field where another glider was derigging, 27 km from goal, and landed safely there with a soaking wet glider. 1-0 to the weather deamons.

Nils Åge got off earlier and made a good run to take second place today. Håkan won the day.

Forecasts for tomorrow are mixed, we’ll see. Picture from briefing first day, it cleared up later.