We had a mostly blue day today, with some good thermals between all the broken and weak thermals trying to get through the inversion.
I got off into nice lift, and met up with the whole team taking the first start clock at 13:20. We all had a good run until the first TP, and from there I joined up with Erland for the 30km headwind leg towards the second TP. I thermalled up 3km from the TP and went on glide with the lead gaggle, but got hammered in sink to the TP and back, loosing out 200m on the pilots just next to me. I found an OK thermal again and got up, but had lost contact with the lead gaggle.
After getting back up Olav Opsanger and Erland caught up with me, and we glided towards goal crossing over a small lake north of Planaltina city. I was 20 meters below and 50 meters to the left of Olav Opsanger, and again hit a massive sink line losing 200m in 1 minute to Olav that was just gliding straight 50 meters away from me. I tried to move away from the sinkline, but even pilots right under me were not affected and I continued to fall out of the sky and was soon groveling low finding nothing. 4 other pilots landed in the same field with me, 16 km from goal. What a shit way to end a good days flying.
The rest of the team did well and made goal, around 30 pilots in goal in total.
It was pretty good racing and strong conditions until til first TP and back towards start. The whole team had a good start, but Olav Lien Olsen was pushing a bit hard and landed close to the first TP. Olav Opsanger and I had a fast flight back to the ridge south of takeoff, when conditions were weaker and we had to change gears a bit and slow down.
I got a terrible line as we glided to the edge of the plateu and came in below Johnny Durant and Olav who banked up in a good core, I could not find the thermal and ended up on my own struggling to get high while the main gaggle further out in the valley got high.
I finally got up and came in over the lead gaggle just before the second TP, but the conditions were slow and weak, and I needed around 150m more height to get back into the lead thermal. I joined a weak core with Bjørn Joakimsen, but we could not find the thermal we needed and landed after some kilometers.
Erland landed close to the second TP, while Olav Opsanger had a great flight and came to goal with 3. place.
We flew a short test task yesterday, and went to the opening ceremony and mandatory safety briefing. It’s around 100 pilots here, and the weather forecast is pretty good for the coming days.
Setting up at launch we can see the first cumulus clouds forming in the valley to the east.
Yesterday turned out to be a fairly good day, it was quite weak thermals early so we all hung out in big gaggles waiting for the second start gate at 1340, for the 84km task.
I flew with Erland until the first TP, while Olav took a different line and met up with us after turning around at the TP. The altitude limit was 2745m GPS height, as the lift got better during the day we had to pull out of lift a few times. Unfortunately Olav had not set up the GPS altitude field on his instrument and went too high and got penalized for it.
Briefing today
Today is very windy at takeoff. We hope it calms down a bit. Otherwise looks like a good day with lower cloudbase.
Yesterday turned out to be very stable and difficult for flying, nobody got far and there were some very late retrieves from the valley below takeoff. We got picked up early by our excellent driver Felipe.
Today should be better conditions, but it feels like yesterday at launch, with some high clouds moving in over us. No task has been set yet.
