Today Andrew and I started to get into our competition routine. Everything is setup, everything happens smoothly and all nicely timed and sequential. That's one of the good points when two engineers work together.. The humour can be quite entertaining at times, or not so, depending how you look at it.
We've settled into the routine of loading up the glider early, followed by briefing, than anything else we need to do, perhaps a trip into town to get a few things followed by a nice relaxed lunch in the shade by the tent and then its off to the grid. It seems to work quite nicely and we haven't had too much of a major disaster. Yet. I don't want to jinx myself or anything but I think that if I acknowledge that something bad is bound to happen, caused by the smallest detail then I can keep focused and be meticulous with the details so nothing falls out of place.
Today I flew for the first time with the spot tracker that I'll have for the comp. Thanks to Al Sim from Go Soaring you will be able to see where I'm flying before you go to bed. This time difference is still messing with my head.
CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW ME ON SPOT
You won't see anything before late evening because of the silly time difference so don't stay up too late as you can see my whole trace on skylines in the morning or on Soaring spot for flights an scores during the comp. I mostly mean you Dad, I know you want to be here and are super jealous but its not my fault if you fall off your chair.
My flight today was supposed to be a more organised task. I only just found out today from Matt that the Pol's are happy to let us in on their practice tasks. tomorrow I think that I'll try to fly with them instead of by myself for the whole day. I still need to gauge how well I can get the 28 to climb when its fully loaded.
My flight was just under 300km today at 103kph. It is noticeable that my flying is improving and my confidence is coming too. There are two big deviations you can see on the trace and these are to find lift closer to better landing areas. Even though I still had plenty of height I'm not yet prepared to push on over some of the terrain there is around here. That confidence will build more through the week especially when I start to fly with more gliders on the same task. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to fly a task with the Pol's and see what the locals are doing. My final glide was much better today, going longer, lower and picking up more on the way. The big thing now is to fly with the locals and work on my track selection with respect to the ground, the air and the task.
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