An early start on Thursday saw the whole team breakfasted and ready to go to the field by 7:00am. The hotel provides an excellent breakfast of both cereals, fruit and Yoghurt as well as a hot selection of sausages, meat balls, scrambled eggs and boiled eggs. The coffee is some of the most excellent we have ever tasted and never seems to be burned or bitter.
Flying began about 8:30 after setting up our 6 winches a little further down the line so we could practice flying from the distance required during the contest. The wind stayed very light all day with fairly active air at times producing some really good 14 to 15 sec speed times for such tough launching conditions. At times full scale gliders joined us overhead doing slow lazy turns as they climbed out and moved on at amazing speed. One sailplane did come in and land on the runway alongside us and we had some fun as David flew the 1:1 scale in with his radio for a video.
Some distance practice was done with Tom flying 32 laps in one session ( with a cut making it an official 30.) The afternoon was actually quite hot in the high 80s by noon and into the low 90’s mid afternoon. With no shade all day it was very tiring especially for Don who has been doing a stellar job signaling from Base B for hours at a time. Today Tom went down there for an hour a d a half after lunch and signaled so Don, Glauco and I could get some practice at flying speed also. It sure was a privilege to have these guys providing excellent one on one tuition and Glauco really got his Fosa humming with a 15 second run while Don is flying his Pike amazingly well also and laid down a fast 16 second time. Both recorded multiple 17’s as well so the coaching really helped. My effort wasn’t quite so good but with very patient teachers they managed to get me into the 17’s once. With the practice session for the helpers over with we went back to some speed and distance training for the remainder of the afternoon.
Many of our friends from other competing nations also arrived to join us on the field so there was quite a lot of activity in the air during the late afternoon. The official country flags were also erected and you will see if you go through the photo gallery that the USA seems to be in great shape already with its share of lift as the entire group of flags remained listless except for the Stars and Stripes which was flapping merrily alongside.
The huge official scoreboard and sighting devices were erected before we left so tomorrow we will be able to practice on the official course as they train the helpers.
We also must prepare for model processing tomorrow afternoon at our scheduled time slot of 3:00pm.
CU all then
Gordon
