Team USA Report – JWGC Contest Day 3-5

The first official day 3 was scrubbed (to no-ones great surprise) and we got to spend the afternoon catching up with administrative and household duties while a slow moving warm from passed over the region bringing significant rain and causing some serious entertainment at the campsite. We had some team meetings to review flights from the days so far, particularly the tough day yesterday and identify simple things that could be done to improve speed.

Day 4 The following day (July 17th) the organizers were trying very hard to get a contest day in the books. The conditions were difficult with a lot of mid and high level cloud growing over the area. The weather pattern they were faced with consisting of the detritus left over from the passing front had the task area firmly in the grasp of a strong pincer movement – the first arm a slow start to the day with approaching thick high cloud and late trigger, and the other an early finish to the day with approaching rain and already wet ground. The original AST task was changed on the grid to a shorter AAT of 2.5hrs in a task that took the pilots west and and then shortened again to 2 hrs.

The skies on Day 4 – Photo by Jacob

The pilots report today is from Steven Tellmann – who, it should be remembered, is only 18 yrs old and competing in his first Junior Worlds. "The crews and team captains are the people running the show for the performers (pilots). They spend their mornings preparing for the pilot's day ahead of flying and do so many things. I would like to give the amazing USA crews and Team Captain Peter Deane a shout-out and a round of applause on behalf of the pilots. The pilots started their morning off at the morning briefing, where they described the forecasted weather, the takeoff direction, grid/ weighing procedures, and the task. We were expected to launch at 11:40, but due to the high and mid -level cloud layers we delayed the launch until 13:55. I was the first pilot to launch for the day, leading the club class out the gate into the sky of high clouds and shady ground. I got into a 3-knot thermal off tow and met up quickly with Jacob and David who launched behind me. We used two of our three PEV starts trying to get the best of the bad starts.

The goal was to try to stick with the gaggle and work our way through the blue holes to the sets of the distance clouds. As every glider pilot knows, what you plan doesn't work. David got separated from myself and Jacob, the clouds started the form but only ½ of them worked at most times, and the sun was not able to punch through the high clouds very well. It was very hard trying to be selective on what clouds I wanted to take for a climb and what clouds I thought would be producing sufficient lift. The first leg of the AAT was rough for me as I felt like I had long glides in smooth air, and had weak climbs, until I reached the developed cloud street at a clear convergence line. I was able to take the strong climbs and energy lines on the street far enough to turn in the first turn point. The second turn was a short leg, so I decided to take the street back out of the first turn and jump to the next street that was disformed by the change in wind, but most of the clouds were producing moderate climb rates for the day. The clouds allowed me to touch the turn and then it was off to the third turn, which was blue at the turn and a few thinning clouds and the way to it. I tried to get the altitude needed for final glide just after the second turn, but the weak climbs made it hard. I took many 1-1.8 m/s climbs trying to find something better in the late day (around 6pm) to scrape together my arrival altitude but nothing was working more than 1.5 m/s. David, Jacob, and myself all briefed that we planned to stick together for the task, except we got split up by different climb rates so we all tried to just make it around the task today using other pilots as markers.

The past two years I have been able to compete in the Senior Soaring Competition and Rich Owens has been an amazing mentor to me. He told me that "We have racing days and we have soaring days, what is hard is racing on a soaring day". I do think that today was a prime example of "racing on a soaring day". While we did not have ideal weather conditions all the pilots made the best of it and tried their hardest to make it around the task. We had a handful of land-outs today, mostly due to the high and mid-level cloud layers not allowing the surface to heat to produce lift."

After the gloom of yesterdays conditions the day dawned brighter and with stronger potential. Conditions were stronger with higher lift and cumulus fields well to the south with lower more sparse cumulus around Ostrow. The task called was a 505km AST in the form of a dogleg out and return to the south and east and back on a similar path. This was a big call for the day and the key question was 'how long will the day last?' The team strategy was to start early enough they would have the best chance of making it round if they got slow. We spoke about the importance of changing gears from the survival mode of the previous day to racing mode in stronger conditions.

All our pilots started shortly after the gate opened which was a good call. The first leg was a little too tentative in club class however they were able to pick up the pace in the east and west legs with stronger cumulus fields before the final leg home which required softer climbs to get home. All our pilots made it around – Thomas Greenhill in Standard class finished 6th and our clubbies finished between 30th and 34th out of 44. Two big items of note about this day was it was both Steven Tellmann's very first 500km flight and also a national distance record for our lone pilot from Indonesia of 505km. He received some wild applause at the pilots meeting this morning!! All classes are highly competitive here and all our pilots are working hard to improve their flying processes and techniques as the contest progresses.