British Champs Task 1

So, Task 1 was a 90km ish race starting in the mountains and ending in the flats.

I had the sweetest ever climb out after enjoying watching the usual Enzo dance on launch. This usually involves the glider coming up very rapidly, twisting back and forth through at least 90deg, and is often followed by the pilot being dumped on their back in a cloud of dust 🙂 Fun and games eh!

Of course, with my sensible glider I took off easily and had the sweetest climb out ever – 5m/s all the way to base! From there it was an easy 7km (I think) to the start gate and I had a great start with only a few gliders in front of me.

Then back to takeoff and from there out into the flats to the east. A lot of gliders to a very circuitous route to this turnpoint but I was able to straight line it to the turnpoint going up at 1.5-2m/s for most of the way. Nice!

By this time the weak front and associated big cover was coming and I only found one weak climb on the longish leg N to Guada. I and a few others stayed pretty much on track from this turnpoint, whilst a large gaggle headed almost 90deg off track to try and find some climbs over the higher ground. But the high cover effectively shut off all thermal activity so we all had a 10km glide to the deck. I managed to eat out my glide onto a small ridge and landed at about 54km.

I was joined shortly afterwards by Richard Butterworth and a Swiss pilot and we were bemoaning the cloud as a few other pilots behind us were climbing very gently in some weak lift, and looked like overtaking us.

Then came the announcement that the task was stopped – yay! Great news for us!! We wondered why, and then five minutes later the reason became apparent – rumbles of thunder from the convergence cloud we’d been heading for! Ok, good call.

The retrieve took as long as expected from a remote village, but all the best and dust was washed down and off with a combination of a beer and a swim in the river once we got back to HQ… Just fantastic!

I thought I’d done ok but I was very surprised when I heard I’d flown the furthest coming joint 1st once the tracklogs had been wound back 10 minutes. Ye ha! My first ever task win in the Champs 🙂