Mistakes were made.
Task for this Saturday’s Condor Race
Booker, Bath North, Weston-Super-Mare, Bridgewater, Sherborne, Northhill. Distance 265km.
Wind 10 knots from NNW, Cloud Base 4921,
Thermals Strong, Variation Medium,
Width Wide, variation Medium
Activity = Low, Turbulence = Moderate
Streeting = Low.
Aircraft = Any of the free gliders.
Launch = Aerotow to 4000ft. Helpers and penalties as before.
All airspace is active, Bristol is Class D and we don’t have ROTL.
This is my first attempt at writing a gliding blog and as a newbie to the sport I was kept busy trying to find and stay in the lift, I wasn’t always aware of what the others (who were often several miles ahead of me) were up to. So I asked some of the other pilots to contribute their experiences of the race.
Pilots could choose from any of the free gliders that come with Condor, which excluded the beloved by some K6. Rick’s favourite Blanik was an option but for some reason, no one went with that. So this was the starting line-up.
Ed Borlase Diana2
Alan Carter Antares 18S
Hugh Gascoyne Diana 2
Matt Howard Duo Discus
Rick Wiles Diana 2
Simon Vallance Antares 18S
With a 10 knot crosswind the aerotow launch proved a little tricky for the inexperienced and although most got away cleanly, I managed to break the tow rope. Fortunately, I was able to restart without penalty and got away at the second attempt.
Once aloft I found plenty of active clouds within the vicinity of the start gate and set off with 5,000+ ft QNH. It soon became clear though that there were some big blue holes in the sky and that not all the clouds had strong lift and some didn’t seem to have any at all! (at least, not that I could find).
The first leg, Booker to Bath is long, over 100 kms and although others were steaming ahead I was flying at my own pace and was getting reasonable lift (average 5 up) form most of the thermals. As I neared Bath however, I hit a big blue hole and by the time I reached a reasonable looking cloud I was down to 1300 ft QNH and very close to the ground. I couldn’t find any lift so had to resort to pressing the thermal helpers key and eventually managed to claw my way up to about 4000 ft and was off again.
I managed to negotiate the Bristol airspace and made it to Weston but not before another couple of presses of the H key and a few more penalty points. By this time, I was way behind the front runners and continued to struggle to centre in the lift.
I eventually arrived at the finish twenty minutes after the leaders, feeling tired after three hours of concentration in a VR headset, and ready for a lie down.
By this time, Hugh had already landed out and Rick was still struggling to come to terms with accidental penalty points – see their notes below.
Rick’s blog.
I think the idea is for all of us to write something about this week’s task. I have decided to write about my worst part of the task, and why you shouldn’t let a teenager get inside your head!!
Part of the day’s task involved flying around some airspace. On our map Bristol Airport has markings drawn in for show it is class D airspace and needing a radio telephony operator license. This was mentioned in the morning’s briefing and also that no one has a RTOL. However, one of our members forgot to load the correct map.
As I am sure you have read before there is a bit of banter that goes on when flying. Saturday was no different. As I was going around the class D airspace approaching the turn point at Weston-Super-Mare, I could see on the map that Matt was very close to the airspace. Not knowing that he couldn’t see the airspace Matt turn towards the coast, at this point I think Matt realized he couldn’t see it and so being clever he typed a message as a radio message asking for permission to transit the airspace. I couldn’t remember the correct key to press allowing me to type a response to deny him permission and started pressing some different keys to find it.
Mistake 1. In my desperation in not finding it I started pressing more keys and ended up pressing the worst one. THE Q BUTTON. I shoot up 1000ft in height and in my horror looked at my points and had gained 150 penalty points. I dropped from top of the stack to 5th.
Mistake 2. Not very happy with myself and the friendly banter coming over the headphones, I thought, it’s OK, not all lost. I have a good lead and if all goes well I could make up the difference. Time to covert the height I had to speed to gain some of the points back. I lowered the noise of the glider. Then something happened over the group chat, Can’t remember what now, but I took my eye off the ASI. When you are close to VNE this isn’t a good idea. The next thing I knew the flutter stated. Not wanting to pull back on the stick to hard I started to ease it back but too slowly. The next moment I was looking at the glider from outside spinning with only 1 wing attached.
Mistake 3. I needed to get this sorted quickly and started pressing F1 to get back in the cockpit. Losing so much height wasn’t good. I then corrected my mistake and pressed q which repaired my glider and gave me another 1000ft of height and then pressed F1 to get back in the cockpit, BUT AT A COST. Another 350 penalty points. And to top it all I was lower than I was when I first pressed Q.
One thing I take from this is thank god it was only on Condor and not for real and how easy it is to allow yourself to be distracted and never try to match wits with a teenager!!!
Hugh’s Blog
After previous tasks I had set out to fly a little more aggressively this time around, so I staunchly topped up the water to the brim and pushed on at 120kts plus on most of the glides. This worked to some degree - as in Rick was still within 10 miles of my position on the first Leg! The downside to this strategy was that I got really low (780ft QNH) but managed to scrape away. Ed and Alan had similar issues early on but both managed to escape field landings (or use of the magic Q button).
Buoyed up with the euphoria of avoiding a land-out, I set about staying with Matt, and for a time I actually held the lead position on the scoreboard. I tiptoed around the Bristol Class D zone, watching my PDA carefully with the display zoomed. I thought I saw a glider icon inside the blue lines, but it may have been a glitch with the system.
Rounding the first TP Matt and I headed for the restricted airspace around Weston Zor - requiring a maximum 2000ft QNH transit. We both managed to clear the airspace but had a battle to climb back up having exited the airspace very low. It was around this point that Rick fell victim to some penalty points - but doubtless that will be recounted herein by our esteemed Condor2 host!
I made the mistake of trying to bag the final turnpoint while still low, rather than going off track before to top up. Surely I would be able to find some lift? I made it to a good looking cloud but it simply wasn't working so I committed to making a safe landing. Turn back into wind, dump the water, wheel down, check the flaps and approach speed. As I rolled to a halt I screenshotted the scoreboard but knew I would be bumped further down the table when the others finished.
As it turned out, Ed won the day with Matt a close second. It was a really fun task and the perfect distance (265km) for a Saturday morning task. Good sky, Rick - Well done!
Simon Vallance
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