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The Oz Report Volume 6, Number 81 The
Wallaby Open blows up There was a complete breakdown of the Wallaby Open competition today when a decision was made without a deep breath being taken before hand. Everyone involved deeply regrets this significant error in judgment. Human beings are just so driven by their emotions, and likely their lack of sleep. The weather forecast continues to be the same (here’s Gary Osoba’s take on it): Looks very similar to the last few
days, maybe not quite as big a chance for precip. The task committee calls a 65 miler with a 10 mile start circle radius for the flexies and 5 miles for the rigid wings. It’s great that we are doing tasks together and also great that we have to go the extra mile (in this case 5) to catch up with the flexies. We’re thinking that the day could over develop and we
want to get everyone out on the course line early, so we call a one and
only With the early start time folks are already in the
launch line at Francoise Mocellin in a WW Talon has her nose way way too high on the cart (she’ll start stalled). We’ve given up telling pilots that they have to have a cart that puts their nose at the proper attitude, because they are told by others to ignore us. This happens again and again. Of course, she comes off the cart veering to the right with little control of the glider and gets too high right away before she gets it under control. The tug pilot gives her the rope and she lands safely. She finds a better cart for her second flight. There is one other way to solve the problem (Talon’s have this problem because their down tubes are so long) which is to not allow the tug to pull the cart, but rather to have the tug pull you until you are way over the control bar and then your tail swings up off the cart and the nose comes down to make for a non stalled angle of attack. This is a bit trickier, but it does allow the confident and skilled aerotow pilot to take charge of their own tow. Other than this continual problem the launch sequence
is rapid fire and most of the flex wings get up and out of there right
away. We rigid wing pilots hold back a bit to give our brethren the
opportunity to get to their start circle a bit further away. We’ve only
got to make five miles in forty five minutes, so it isn’t a big
sacrifice. Given that it is so early in the day the lift is light, but cloud base is already pretty high, 3,500’. I’m just staying in whatever lift there is because there is no big hurray to go anywhere as we wait for the start time. As The clock ticks and we are pulled in keeping out of the
clouds and heading for the Off to our right we notice the flex wing pilots. Felix comes on the radio and says that it looks like they are making the signal that the day is called. I can not believe this as the day looks absolutely perfect. I radio to Belinda to check right away and see what’s up. Then JC Brown’s voice comes on the radio announcing that the day has been called. We see twenty or so flex wings low to our right coming back toward the Ranch and trying to scratch up. Unbelievable. Manfred and Oleg don’t fly with radios (you should do this too if you want to be like them) and continue racing out in front of all the flex wings. Steve Pearson is in the same boat. Mike Barber and Chris Zimmerman continue along the course even though they know that the day has been called. I fly right back to the Ranch and go to find out what happened. The day looked perfect and it is very unclear what was going on. We did see a bit of rain and virga near the location of the flex wings, but it is the only rain in the sky and it looked so light that it is hard to believe that this was the issue. It turns out that Gerolf called on his radio and had his driver get JC Brown to come over to the van and speak with Gerolf on the radio. Gerolf told him that it was raining hard and raining on the course line and that if he was going to call the day he needed to call it now so that all the pilots could be informed visually if they didn’t have radios. JC immediately cancels the task. No other pilot in the air is contacted about the conditions to confirm Gerolf’s observations. JC doesn’t contact the safety director nor the safety committee about calling the task for safety reasons. Because of one pilot’s feelings and observations and one meet director’s immediate and not properly considered response to the expressions of those feelings and observation, a perfectly beautiful day of competition flying is lost. Many flex wing pilots are completely shocked by the task cancellation. They felt that the rain was minimal. They didn’t see the problem as Gerolf experienced it. Manfred and Oleg race into goal only to find that there is no goal line and every one is at lunch. They are very unhappy about the turn of events. The latest scores should be available at: http://www.elltel.net/peterandlinda/Wallaby_Open_2002/Wallaby.htm Yesterday I blew it yesterday when I called for the day to be
stopped at I was able to make up nine minutes on the leaders over the course. This shows just how valuable it is to be able to follow rather than lead. The lead gaggle will just be too slow and it is possible to catch or at least get close to them from behind. My speed points would have likely more than made up for my reduction in departure/leading points and I was really benefiting from the fact that others were leading. The Compe-GPS software was not able to account for the
fact that we stopped the day (well, at least I think it is the software).
So the scorekeeper and the meet director are deep into making the scores
correct. They had to go in manually (I think they had to) and designate
each pilot’s stop point on their track logs at So you can imagine that the scores are a bit in error as they go through today and try to figure out what happened with Compe-GPS and Race so that Class I pilots got the wrong stop points even when the correct ones were designated. Nancy
Smith update Contrary to yesterday’s report
To view the Oz Report on the web go to http://www.davisstraub.com/OZ/. To view this issue of the Oz Report on the web go to http://www.davisstraub.com/OZ/Ozv6n81.htm/. Davis Straub |