Summer Thermal

SCSA Thermal Competition 23 August 2009

We held a thermal competition on Minchinhampton common on 23 August with a 10:00am start.

The wind was quite strong for a thermal competition and was blowing from the South at about 12 to 15 mph.

By 9:30 there we had 6 members willing to enter the competition, this was the minimum number that we required and meant that we could only fly 2 planes in each slot because each plane needed a pilot, a time keeper and a winch man. Mick Shepherd didn't fly but he did some time keeping to help us out. Brian layed out two landing boxes and brought the paper work with the slot information ( this was being a bit optimistic by allowing places for 4 pilots in each slot).

Bryan and Phil flew the first slot and found there was very little thermal activity on the common. I think that the strong breeze was dispersing any thermals before they became very strong. Phil managed  5 minutes and 5 seconds and Bryan landed with 10 seconds less,  they both missed the landing boxes due to not being able to penetrate the headwind towards the boxes.

Brian and Mike found even less lift in the 3rd slot and flew 3 minutes 57 and 4 minutes and 19 seconds, again both pilots got the landing bonus.

The strong wind made towing the gliders very easy, just a dozen running steps being enough for the kite effect to kick in, in fact some of the plastic models went up so fast and pulled so hard that they almost dragged the tow men up into the air too. It would have been very easy to break an older built up model on the line if the tow men did not run back towards the pilots.

The following 6 slots were very much similar to the first 3 with the best flight time being 5 minutes and 38 seconds by Phil, this was 1 second longer than Pete's best time!

Bryan had 2 slots where the model appeared to come off the tow line early, the second time was more pronounced than the first. It looked like the model had broken the tow ring or broken the line but on closer examination it turned out to be that the tow hook had been bent away from the fuz allowing the ring to slip off. (That's my excuse for coming last!!)

At the end of the competition, Phil was declared the winner, getting 7 points  more than Pete. How close was that? And Mike and Andy finished 1 point apart

Phil received the Thermal Cup from the chairman and Phil was wearing a big grin which can be seen on one of his web photos.
I think we all enjoyed it, we could have done with a few more thermals, but the short flight times meant that we could get home to watch the European Grand Prix live.
 
Thank you to everybody who turned up to compete or help.