Well done johno. First of all he had to go to an international competition to get his first day win, secondly it was his first thermal flight in this country and in the LS4. Johno was converted into the LS4 yesterday and he did 2 circuits with no lift at all. So it was a very good acheivement overall. I was 0.8 km/h slower due to handicap, comming 4th behind the 2 Swedish pilots.
The flight.
The task was a 2 hour AAT with 2 areas and a control point. It was a very interesting day today with storms to the East and the North-East of Raskala A/F as we started. We decided to start at the western end of the line and head almost due north up the first leg. We ended up turning in line with the turnpoint because of a blue hole. The 2nd leg was different to what I am used to. There was decent scattered cu on track with the rain slightly to the right. I initialy wanted to try the fluffy cu where there was sun shining on the ground( I mean trees) Johno deviated to the right under the darker clouds which looked like they would dump anytime. This move paid off for him as he joined up with me 10km later 1000ft higher. This is where we turned slightly north-east ( we were tracking east) up a cu street. This was the best run of the day with 4-6 kt with a couple of 7-8kt to 4-5000ft. We turned 90 km to run and 45min. I got a bit distracted with airspace and not having a working ASI or audio vario. This is where it got tricky. There was a wall of water half way home. Great.
Chapter 2
So due to lack of communication on my part Johno kept heading north and I turned. We quickly realised and made a decision to head to the south of the weather and go round the bottom. The main trouble we had was airspace. It looked like if we went far enough north or south to go round the rain we would run into airspace. As we got colser to the rain we saw a lightning flash. Seeing this we instantly went to plan B and headed to the north. I had been watching a gap between the rain get a little bigger the whole leg and we headed for it. The trouble was that it looked like there wasn't much behind it. We took a climb on the northern edge of the weather to above cloud base in the end, up the side probably 2-300 ft. We then had a long glide at best L/D to get to a lone cu. There was 4kt under this to cloud base at 4000. This is where I left Johno and headed off on another best L/D glide, still to the right of track as it looked like the only bit of sky that was working. Here I climbed to base and was 780ft above a 3kt mac with a 1000ft goal height. I headed for the last turn which had a nice cu over the top and was 10km from home at 2600ft. Yay. I made it. Johno was about 10 min behind. Johno 1st, Madpup 4th( 50 points behind) and overall AUS leading.
I hope this wasnt to much info in 1 shot. Please comment
madpup