Saturday, July 6, 2013

Long task for Day 4

They have gone on their Day 4 task. The Club Class has an AST of 413 Km with 5 turnpoints located mostly in the Northeast sector.  During the weekend several airspace zones are open in that sector, which otherwise does not support tasks due to the multiple prohibited areas with various, and mostly low, altitude limits.
Take-off started at noon, as planned, quite earlier than normal for this site. The sky now is reminiscent of a good day at Uvalde, with nicely spaced Cu reaching around 4500-5000 ft. But looks are deceptive, as thermal strengths have been nothing like Uvalde so far today. The voices that we occasionally hear over the radio sound quite happy when calling lift better that 2 m/s (4 kt). I haven't heard a 5 knotter being reported yet. So, with 413 Km to go, a 10-15 kt wind, and assuming about 80 Km/hr (50 mph) average speed for the Club Class, this is likely to be a 5-hour task at least, more probably 6, if not 7 hours, depending on how the cloud cover evolves .

A Uvalde-looking sky (without the high climb rates) over still-uncut wheat and barley fields to the horizon


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