SI Regionals report GKD

Had my best regionals ever, second in class, Most Meritorious Flight of the Competiton - won a big cup, but mainly had a great week of flying, 6 flying days out of 7 - I really needed the day off!

Pretty much all thermal days, I reckon we used up at least a years worth in the one week, no wave, very little ridge was working apart from thermal. I managed to get round each day apart from one, where I got dumped on Ben Avon in the Ahuriri and just managed to sneak back through the Ribbonwood Gap and with a couple of 1 knot little thermals across the basin and Cloud hills, snuck back to OA. Basically a 40k glide visiting all the landout strips en route trying to minimise the cost of the aero retrieve. Had my hand on the undercarriage lever a couple of times - climbed away from 500ft over the Ben Dhu strip. Very low all the way but had a strip in sight for most of it. Very stressful!

However the good times. I won 2 days, the first by default as Wilson had a technical L/O and Kev's logger stopped, but who cares! My first day win for 3 years. Apart from the fact I had to stand up at the briefing and describe a very scratchy day's flight. A number of the 'guns' commented to me it took them back to when they didn't know what they were doing either!

The second win however I felt I really deserved. When I got back I knew I could have saved perhaps 10 minutes where I dicked around at the end of the Dingle trying to get some extra height - which I never got - to go out into the valley to ping the waypoint. The rest of the flight was perfect, 2 massive climbs, one at Magic and one a 10,300 ft 8kt thermal over Ben Avon which meant I could just follow the ridges for the rest of the flight - no turns! For once I planned the flight and actually followed the plan. Speed for the day was 100.3kph, which apparently is quite good for a club class glider, typically the winner was in the 80-90kph range. So that flight was awarded the Fred Dunn Trophy for the Most Meritorious Flight of the Comp. First ever gliding cup, very pleased!

Final results below, you will see I just didn't win by 23 points from Wilson - if I had managed another 500m or so distance on the last day's AAT task I would have won, but Kev was probably going to win overall had he not had logger problems. Next year...!!

I have added Google Earth kml files for the 2 days I won, so you can follow the good and the bad. igc files as well for those with SeeYou.

First win: 2013-11-20-XCS-AAA-01[1].igc.kml   2013-11-20-XCS-AAA-01.igc

AAT task (AAT Task.jpg), which means 10k or 20k circles around the waypoints, the idea is the maximise the distance over time by going as far into the circles as you can. AAT is used for days when the lift is likely to be hard to find, which it was this day. The waypoints show up in the KML file but not the circles. Spent a lot of time trying to get over the Dingle Saddle and again at the southern end of the Ohau Range to get the last 2 waypoints out in the Mackensie basin. Ended up very low at the north end of the Dobson a couple of times, once just above minimum height to reach the Glenbrook strip.

Second win: 2013-11-22-XCS-AAA-01[1].igc.kml  2013-11-22-XCS-AAA-01.igc
Conventional Racing task (Racing task.jpg) with 0.5k beer can turnpoints. Just to show how it should be done.

One side benefit of the comp is the photography, I have attached some pics - sorry about the shirt!

Finally we really ought to get some more people over for at least the Cross Country course before the regionals. JW was over there for some of it, but it was all planned too late. Next year why don't we plan well ahead to get JW over, I am sure John/Doug/Pete (even me if you could stand the stress) would be happy to back seat and show people around the mountains. 

Club Class - Overall Results.

Pilot	Rego	Glider type	Hcap	Day 1 (17/11/2013)	Day 2 (18/11/2013)	Day 3 (19/11/2013)	Day 4 (20/11/2013)	Day 5 (22/11/2013)	Day 6 (23/11/2013)	Total
Wilson Ellery	NG	Standard Astir	89	904	1000	836	245	75	608	3668
Brian Savage	KD	ASW 19b	93	615	684	303	533	833	677	3645
Kevin Bethwaite	CC	LS 4b	96	405	176	363	392	414	1000	2750
Glyn Jackson	VV	Ventus 2a	104	662	667	0	99	0	0	1428
Kerry Greig	UP	DG 800b	103	381	0	697	53	0	0	1131