Tuesday December 18th - Humbling practice day...

Gidday Race Fans:

Or I should say goodnight race fans. Today the GP Pilots woke up to a solid cloud deck that looked to make soaring problematic at best. Combined with a very deep layer of wind from the Southeast, things looked to be very interesting for the non-local pilots. The weather briefer said that things should be soarable by 2-2:30 p.m. While the pilots all looked skeptical, the skies did clear and the Mackenzie Basin began to cook. Mind you it was not going like gangbusters even a the end of the day, but it did afford the GP pilots the opportunity to take advantage of the last practice day.

As I write to you now, the wind is strongly out of the east at the airfield in the typical sea breeze. Usually this is a pattern created by the strong thermals of the interior of the South Island. It is now un-typical to find yourself facing a 20-30 mph head wind below about 1000 feet Agl when coming back into Omrarama at the end of the day from the west due to this phenomenon. But today, the winds aloft in the basin were pretty steady at about 4-8 knots from the Southeast. Just enough to make things very tricky.

Practice Days at comps are funny things and today was no different. Practice days afford both the organizers and the pilots the chance to get their acts together and hopefully have everything (scoring, gridding, weighing, etc.) humming in fine tune when the 1st official contest day comes around.

For the organization, it is often a time to get all the personnel into town and to throw some sort of organizational system against he wall in the hope it sticks. Usually the contest organization just hits its stride when the comp is ending. Here at Omarama, add in the extra complication of fitting the gliders for their real-time telemetry and getting the live broadcast team and setup working and you can see what a project this might be at the best of times. It puts how the "big" sports like the NFL, etc. put on their grand shows every week in perspective.

For pilots, these days are a chance to make sure their ships are in good working order and a chance for non-local pilots to survey the task area. For a pilot, you need to balance the desire to get racing, with the caution to husband your resources for the days that really count coming up. It is good to keep in mind that no matter how heroic or well you fly on any practice day, it means absolutely nothing on the final scoresheet.

The GP format is a little bit unusual in that the scope of the contest is greatly reduced. A normal World Gliding Contest (WGC) is schedule for 4 days of practice, then 14 days of flying. A GP (Qualifier or World Championships) is limited to a maximum of ten days total (I think...) This contest was scheduled for 2 practice days, six competition days, and then two reserve days in case the original six are not enough to name a champion. The idea is to shorten the length of the contest to make it into a more sellable event.

Having lost the first official practice day to the horrible weather, today's second practice day would be all everyone had to get things right for tomorrow's first official contest day. Today's practice day was the typical charlie foxtrot that practice days can be. Add in the sometimes marginal weather and the technology at work and many pilots had frustrating days. Then add in the various broadcast elements (Animation Research, R2, AirsportsLive) and it begins to look like a circus. As I write to younow from the briefing room at Omarama Airfield, I am surreoundby people moving in banners and signs and computers and microwave dishes and.... I am gettign tired jsut looking at all this stuff.


Now to the flying:

Brian Spreckley (CD) set up and A and a B task. The A task was around 220km, and woudl ahve taken us Southwest to Morven, then over to Makaroa, then across a number of moutnain ranges to Stewarts, north of Lake Pukaki, and then home. The B task was a more leisurely 159 km, and took us to the Dingle Valley then Stewarts and return. After all the gliders were launched and with Gavin Wills advising from the air in a Duo Discus, Brian, IMHO wisely opted to cancel the day. By 15:10 (Local) the cloud bases were only 5,000 MSL (just over 3600 feet AGL) and both tasks looked difficult. Not impossible , but definitely risky. With all this testosterone going at this contest, the wise thing was to not force us pilots into anything.

However, in order to give the black boxes in every glider a chance to do their thing - and more importantly to see what they did, if anything, to the pilot's glider instruments, Brian ran a practice start just to get the procedures clear in the pilot's minds. With this setup, most pilots took starts in the adrenaline producing 10 second countdown to line-open. Think the America's Cup start - only in 3-d and with 18 sailboats at speeds up to 120 mph.

The generic rules for the GP pre-start maneuvering are: All gliders must be behind (relative to the first leg track) the extended start line 1 minute prior to the line opening. The actual line to get a valid start is 5 km in length, running 2.5 and 2.5 km to either side of the start point and perpendicular to the first leg's track. There is a maximum start height of 45oo MSL at the start line. And there is a maximum speed limit of 170kph (ground speed) as you cross the line. Then off you go racing.

Easy... Right? Not so much. I myself forgot to input the B task in my computer system which made it almost imposible to start over the correct start line. This is what practice days are for aren't they? A few other pilots had interference from their broadcast boxes that disabled their GPS navigation systems - making getting a good start really difficult. Luckily TM's nav and logger systems worked perfectly. Now if only my brain would. Still other gliders had some radio issues that complicated the entire task change.

But off we went racing. The general gist of it was to try and get over to Magic Mountain with enough height to flop over into the Ahuriri valley, and then hook-up with a convergence line over the Dingle ridge where cloudbase was about 8k. Some were able to do it, some did not. TM chose the path of least resistance and stayed in the local area in the weird southeasterly winds. With the exception of needing to hop a stock fence as I crossed a mountain col (!!!) the day was pretty pedestrian. Tomorrow I promise to unleash the fury!

All of the same stuff that happens when you watch an auto race on TV (minus the rubbin', hopefully) happens at an glider race only no one has been there live to see it all. This race they will thanks to all the tracking technology deployed. Speaking of which, there is still 1.4 metric tonnes of microwave cameras and other gear coming from ABC (Australian Broadcast Corporation) which will let the broadcast team look live into all of our cockpits after Dec 21st. Ever wondered what world champions do in a race. Well this is the first time you may be able to see it unfold live. Sign-up and watch things unfold in a way our sport has never seen before.

That's it.

See Ya! Tim/TM