13.5 Meter Super Regionals Practice Day 1

We arrived on Sunday here at TSA for the 13.5 Meter Super Regionals/1-26 Championships.  The weather forecast was a bit iffy today with pretty much a guarantee for blowups later in the afternoon.  We had a practice pilot meeting and a practice task so we could practice flying and the scorer could practice scoring. The task was a 2.5 hr MAT with mandatory first turn at Luscombe Acres and final steering point at Maypearl.  I took off first around 1:30. Conditions near the airport were iffy because of some higher cloud cover but I found a small climb and then found a good climb near the edge of the start circle by Maypearl.

I was really  happy to have a MAT as I've only ever flown one before and it was good to have the practice.  There are a ton of close in turnpoints which turned out to be a bit too tempting as I started picking up a bunch of turnpoints without really building up much distance.  I was out in cloud-land while TSA still seemed to be in a big hole so I did my best to pick a direction that seemed to have good clouds and a turnpoint. I got just west of the Interestate and then did a couple North/South runs between Grandview and Hillsboro airport.  I had an awesome sort of low save at Itasca, finding a thermal off town that strengthened from 2 knots to a 7 knot average at one point. After getting back to Hillsboro the Oudie was still showing me about 4 minutes under but there were a few clouds sort of in the direction of TSA and I had heard Daniel Sazhin and Kevin Anderson call that they were landing.  I was starting to wonder about making it home and decided that 4 minutes under wasn't too bad. I found a good climb to cloudbase east of Hillsboro that put me right on the edge of a glide to TSA.  There wasn't much looking good on the way so I didn't worry about trying to pick up a final turnpoint before the steering point. I managed to bump up in a few weak thermals on the way and made the glide comfortably with a good finish slightly above minimum height.

We checked the forecast and decided to put YYY back in the trailer. Just after closing the door it started to sprinkle. By the time we were up to the clubhouse it was a steady rain, just as a Ventus landed. Then it turned to downpour. I ran out to hold down his wing and got a good soaking in the process. It was nice and cool though after a hot day.  At supper it rained more and more. Doubt there will be much flying tomorrow.  Hopefully things will dry out for Day 1 on Wednesday. I did check around and didn't find Frank Paynter anywhere so I don't know what the deal is with the rain ;)

Here is my flight from today: http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2546199