Temora 2003 was my first serious nationals flying for about 4 years. Tegan and I flew the club’s Janus in the 2002 nationals, in 18m class - a lot of fun and very enjoyable, but not really a competitive situation. The previous two years I had been the contest director for the world championships in Australia
The big question for me, was I flying well enough to perform to my own expectations? Having done a little bit of flying at Bacchus and at Bendigo over cup weekend, I actually felt quite confident. Not really a high level of preparation, but feeling quite comfortable in my abilities and flying performance.
Selecting a glider.
There were three of us intending to fly club gliders in the competition. Olgi had flown the Cirrus in the previous nationals and indicated that he would probably fly this again. Jarek wanted the LS4 so it looked like a choice between Jantar and DG300. I had flown the Jantar in a previous nationals, and as it is a fairly heavy glider with me in it, it was not really competitive (the handicap is increased when you go over a certain weight - I am always over a certain weight). The DG looked good. It was also heavy but had a good base handicap which left some room to move. I also have a lot of hours in the DG, having flown it in a number of nationals and internationals in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
I had been advising the handicap committee for a number of years that the DG should have the same handicap as the LS4 but they were not really interested. However, when I turned up at Temora with the DG, all of a sudden everyone else noticed the handicap difference and were making a number of comments - a good psychological advantage on day 1.
Flying
Day 1: I arrived in time for a short flight on the practice day and then we were into the competition. It had been a while since I had flown the glider but I quickly felt at home. The first day was a short task, a 2.5hr Assigned Area Task in the blue, with quite strong climbs in places but a maximum height of 5-6 thousand.
out on track and the electrics all went dead - the battery was flat. Luckily there was enough power to keep the logger working and I turned everything else off to give the battery a chance of surviving to the end of the flight - zero points if the logger stops. Simon Brown lent me his new battery that solved this problem for me in future days.
The mechanical vario works after a fashion but it certainly didn’t help with finding the thermal cores. I was fairly well on my own and flew well into the first sector, about 15km past the first turn. There was a slight tail wind on the second leg and so I went into the turn as low as possible until I found a thermal and used this point as the turnpoint. Bruce Taylor came past in the ASW22 a little lower and so I chased after him - a good thermal indicator. The first climb was typical Bruce strength - as good if not better than previously found. After that it was long glide as we passed by thermal after thermal. Bruce disappeared into the distance and I was on my own again. The flight was uneventful apart from being a little tricky finding the cores. The final glide was simply based on 10km per thousand feet plus 500 feet safety height. Worked out well. 103kph and 9th for the day which I was pleased with given the lack of instruments, and the points were quite good - close to 900.
Day 4: The next two days were quite good flying, I felt quite comfortable and spent most of the time on my own - one of the advantages of this type of task with glider performance differences. A 2nd and 4th place moved me up to about 4th place overall.
Day 4 was a much larger task, a 4 hour AAT with expected cloud base over 12,000 feet. The Cu looked good but as I was late to launch I had a large climb to make to get up to start height. Surprisingly the climbs weren’t all that strong and quite broken. I changed thermals a few times but by the time the start gate opened I was still only at 7-8 thousand feet. To make matters worse, the start gate was warning people about the dangers of hypoxia (flying too high without oxygen).
Finally reached 10 thousand feet, cloud base still a thousand feet higher but the thermals quite weak at that height. I decided to start as there was potential for thunderstorms later in the day. There was a relatively strong wind from the west, about 15-20 knots, and the sky was quite blue out on the first leg. There were some small cu remaining due west which I guessed were still within the assigned area, so instead of heading south west the turnpoint at Grong Grong I headed due west to just tip the top of the 40km turnpoint circle.
The first leg was really good, a couple of strong climbs and a little bit of streeting. The Cu were just on the edge of the turnpoint circle and I climbed in one of the last Cu and glid into the blue to get a low turn into wind. Many others had turned much earlier than me in the assigned area and were already well on the second leg by the time that I turned. A couple of low gliders as I headed east were all that I saw.
A great second leg, 20m knot tailwind, cloud streets and 8-10 know climbs. About 160kph saw me turn near the far edge of the second turnpoint - feeling good.
The track north looked a little different. Good looking clouds but a lot of over-development and very black. I picked what appeared to be the best street which took me slightly west of track - slightly upwind - but this overdeveloped too much and I had to veer a little to the east. Still good climbs but now getting harder to pick as the whole sky was now clouded over and it was hard to pick which cloud had the good thermals.
Radio calls from pilots about 50km ahead, up near to Forbes, indicated that the lift was good to the north as it was out in the clear. Could I get there? How much time is left? I needed to make sure that I didn’t stretch too far so that I went a long time over the nominated 4 hours.
Gliding towards Forbes, under the overcast, no thermals. The sky was clear to the east of me, downwind, and close to the edge of the turnpoint circle. Much more distance was possible by going ahead past Forbes. As I glid further and lower I started to wonder if I was actually going to find another thermal under the overcast. One climb to 9-10,000 would make a huge difference, but gliding to the ground would mean disaster for the competition. At 3500 feet I gave up and headed northeast to the blue sky and a couple of wispy clouds. Finally in weak lift, I climbed slowly and was joined by Peter Buskens (Beaufort club) who had made a similar decision.
Time to go home. If I got back it would be under time and therefore I will have lost a lot of distance and hence speed. Still, better to get some speed points rather than just distance. No chance of wining the comp now. First I head to get home. The weaker thermals weren’t going very high but Peter was still racing and encouraged me to push on to the better clouds to the south. Direction home looked absolutely terrible, dark grey and lowering cloudbase, better to stay east and head due south. A high climb may get me home.
Next thing there were 4-5 of us, including Olgi in the Jantar and Jarek in the LS4. Lots of choices in clouds to try, and finally we got a good climb. Back up to 8,000 feet and getting home was in the bag, Still, I had wasted so much time in weaker thermals, and I would be coming home 15 -20 minutes early. No need to rush and a fairly sedate final glide got me home.
A lot of gliders still missing, and a few worried faces from the crews who were hearing the pilots speaking of problems in getting home. Eventually most gliders got home, but due to the over-development many were well over time, thus their speed was significantly reduced. In the end I placed 4th for the day at 91kph - other had had similar problems and disaster had become a quite good result. Suddenly I was 1st overall, by about 20 points.
The competition was then impacted by the smoke from the Canberra fires and we lost a number of days where smoke just stopped all thermals or made visibility impossible.
Day 6: Day 5 was a little weaker but a good flight for third place extended my lead to about 30 points. Only one day left to fly with three or four people breathing down my neck.
The last day: The last day looked quite good. Cu at 8,000 plus and not much wind. The sky to the north east was a little overdeveloped but other than that a good looking day. A few gliders headed North east to the eastern edge of the firs turn circle, Bu I liked the look of the streeting to the north and so headed off in that direction. The first part of the leg went very quickly, very reliable climbs and I found some good streeting which really helps to cover the ground. I met up with David Wilson (VMFG) and then Peter Buskens and shared a thermal with each of them, but they had different ideas on which streets to follow and I wanted to make sure that I went to the furthest possible point of the turn circle.
The second leg was a repeat of the first, with cloudbase up near 10,000 feet and some good streets. Halfway along the second leg came a decision point. Some over-development directly on track led me to diverting south of track. In order to travel as straight a path as possible I decided to head to the southern most part of the turnpoint circle. Conditions were actually quite good down to the south, much less cloud and good looking brown paddocks. I went to the very which showed that I was travelling at nearly 200kph - 3 Km per minute. With 30 km to go this will take 10 minutes - just on time. I started to meet other gliders at this stage of the flight, first seen for 90 minutes or more.
I was pleased with the flight, no real problems and some really great glides and climbs. Maybe the path that I took was not as good as going directly to the turn? Still, if anyone beats me today then they deserve to win. As it turns out, 2 people beat me and I was third for the day - but those close behind on aggregates were behind - I kept first place.