Big Spring - Day 5

105 miles on a junk day...

The tropical storm to the SE is starting to have an effect here. Skies were increasingly overcast this morning. By the time launch rolled around, it was fully socked in with light cu's embedded underneath the high clouds to the north.

Glover's video from today:

Or
Here

With the very light conditions, like a dumbass, I pinned off at 1400ft. as I thought I was in a good thermal. I wasn't. I'd spend the next hour with others between 1500ft. and 2500ft. trying to survive and not getting blown too far away from the airport. We'd all hang on with the lightest touch in the lightest lift, then beat upwind toward the airport. At times I thought about just running back to the ground and getting a tow back up to 2000ft.

The start wasn't really important as we were all in survival mode. I dribbled outside the start circle sometime after the second start with Davis. We didn't stay together for long, and soon I was out on my own under the high clouds. It looked bleak. I kept plodding along finding 300fpm here and there, and zippy and I eventually hooked up. We took a couple thermals together. There were very elusive cores. Zippy and I had to constantly adjust and search out stronger stuff as we climbed. I happened to find a strong little core and zippy missed it. After I topped out, I was on my own again.

I kept pushing out over the oil fields cross wind, slowly looking for cu's embedded under the cirrus. I was making pretty good progress. Near the first turnpoint, the cirrus ended and I was looking forward to finally getting out in the sun where hopefully better lift was.

Around the turnpoint, things really turned on for me and I started flying the clouds. I eventually caught a nice one right up to base that gave me a 16 to 1 glide from 50km out to goal. A 50km final glide would have been nice, but we still had a cross wind component and there was massive sink at times. I stopped 40km out to climb a bit. My numbers weren't improving. At 25km out, I was getting nervous. There was some pretty rough terrain below away from the road, and I was sinking fast. I had to cross a large sand dune area before finding lift 10km out. Everything worked out and I crossed the 6km goal cylinder at 5:03pm. I boated around looking for other gliders as we had no dedicated landing area.

Found a couple of the rigid pilots along with Glen and Kraig and landed in strong SE winds. Six flex wings made it in overall, I think I'm third. Glen won the day and might have moved ahead of me in the standings. We'll see. Amazing that we can fly so far crosswind with such poor conditions. Texas delivers.

Airtime: 4:30. Flights: 1. Miles: 105.