Inter Club League - Saturday

Unexpected weather - a distinct lack of rain - started the morning. Don's bullish behaviour revealed a met forecast from Watton that suggested 3kts to 4K later in the day - showers possible.

Task were set
Pundit: SWAnton Morely, LITtleport, East DEereham - 161km
Intermediate: SWAnton Morely, WHiTtington, East DEereham - 126km
Novice: SWaNnington, PICkenham, East DEereham - 108km

Teams were announced - unusually there are so many TIB pilots in all classes that were were able to have two teams - the official TIB team and the NFN Reserves. This was always going to test my skills as a team captain ... Even after fielding 6 pilots we still had a spare pundit to lend to Wormingford ... not possibly my best decision of the day.

Launching started around 12:15 when Ray Hart took to the skies in Tim Highton's ASW19, I followed shortly after but failed to make a 700' winch launch stick so landed onto the aerotow queue, which was fairly short at the time.

The tug duly arrived at 13:00 and promptly towed me through 3kts at 1200ft, turned hard and I released giving the treasurer 200ft free. The flight passed in a blur of disbelief - "5kts ... this wasn't on RASP!" and with a policy of keeping about 2k I was soon completing the 2nd leg at 104kph and crossed with Ray Hart - FLARM is really useful for keeping tabs on the "opponents". At the end of the third leg I was able to climb onto glide under a large black cloud at EDE and in the excitement nearly missed the TP (another mistake). The final glide back to TIB was uneventful, except for the feeling that I was talking to a brick wall when making 5 and 2 minute radio calls. While doing 100kts with the speed director wailing, a "click - click" acknowledgement is bugger all use!

I landed to find Ray's shakedown flight before the Eastern's had been quite useful. Apparently the copy of GlideNav I has set up for him was in metres and an ASW19 doesn't have quite the same glide performance as a Nimbus 2.

After derigging scoring began ... as is traditional at Inter Club leagues there were many obstacles ... the club computer had rejected it's copy of windows, my laptop needed SeeYou, Airspace, TPs and COM port drivers, John Roche-Kelly's GPS wasn't talking to the logger, Martin from Wormingford was convinced his logger turned off mid flight.

It was a successful day. 11 pilots launched on the three tasks with only 1 land out and 1 failure to start - Jim White is right "Turbos are the devil's work".

Interim results - speeds are Handicapped:

Novice:
1. Simon Urry - Mosquito - NFN - 58kph
2. Martin Hargreaves - ASW19 - ESGC - 45kph
3. Josie Briggs - Astir - NGC - (20km)

Intermediate:
1. James Francis - Std Cirrus - NGC - 60kph
2. John Roche-Kelly - ASW19 - NFN - Awaiting 2nd logger
3. Vernon Bettle - Ventus CT - ESGC - DNS

Pundit:
1. Tim Davies - ASW27 - (ESGC) - 91kph
2. Ray Hart - ASW19 - NGC - 79kph
3. Peter Ryland - DG400(17m) - NFN - 74kph

Dilemma of the day: When you fly for another team when they are short of pilots - how hard should you try?