Thermal
Soaring Competition with Malvern Soaring Association
We had a great time at Fish Meadow courtesy of Malvern
Soaring Association. The Malvern Club invited SCSA to a challenge using 4 man
teams, each team member was to fly against each of the 4 opponents, man on man,
generating a total of 16, ten minute slots.
The Malvern hosts were very well organised and provided a
table with sun shade complete with timing apparatus and a tanoy system. They
also provide a power winch for our team to use in launching the gliders and good
advice on its use.
The flying started about 10:30am in brilliant sunshine but
almost no wind at all – thank goodness we didn't have to use our hand-tow
lines and run across the very wet and slippery grass. Unfortunately I opted to
fly the 1st slot, never been up a power winch, but luckily the launch
wasn't too bad. I fought for some time getting the model trimmed and didn't find
much lift, needless to say I was beaten in this round.
As the comp progressed there were some patches of excellent
lift that made getting down after 10 minutes quite a challenge.
At the lunch time ½ way point we were lagging well behind
mainly due to my second slot where I relaunched after 2 1/4 minutes and then
only managed 2 minutes and 22 seconds from the relaunch which put me straight
into mega sink! Still the rest of the team were there doing well and nearly
every slot in the afternoon was very tightly contested.
We didn't get trounced, but did get beaten on points we
finished the comp with 8 slot wins on each side but with Malvern scoring 14,762
points and the SCSA scoring 13,960. Interestingly we managed 15 out of 16
landing boxes whilst Malvern managed 13 ½ out of 16.
The SCSA broke 3 models during the day. Pete's tailplane
broke off during a practice launch, the model came down without too much more
damage. Phil wrote off his Calypso on the power winch. He had not reset his
launch pre-set switches before launching and did not have enough elevator
control to get off the line and was pulled directly into the ground at high
speed. I wrote my thermal model off on my final slot landing. With only 2
seconds of the slot to go and being 3 feet too high I had to tentpeg the landing
to guarantee the landing bonus.
Many thanks to the Malvern Club for organising the competition so well.
Also many thanks to the SCSA competitors for giving Malvern
a good challenge.
Chairman Bryan
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