Everyone's back

We had some major excitement at Luesse airfield today while the competitors were on task. The wheat field beside the airport went up in flames. It happened with frightening speed. I was working on the veranda of the clubhouse when I heard somebody yell to call the fire department. When I walked around the corner of the building I looked at wall of smoke and flames. From the sound of it the fire was really close. It looked like the campground was about to be consumed by the flames. I went out to the our trailers to make sure they and the cars were safe. Fortunately, the wind component blew the flames away from the airport and they never jumped the dirt road between the wheat field and the airport. The fire was down as quickly as it had sprung up.

A fire so close to the airfield raises some interesting questions. When the gliders are on the ground, there is about 20 million dollars worth of equipment sitting there plus tow planes and cars. What if half of the fleet would get wiped out by a grass fire before the contest has even started?


Dave and Jerzy both completed the task which had a minimum time of 3.5 hrs. Jerzy achieved a speed of 117 km/hr, Dave is estimating his speed at 99 km/hr over 412 km - slow again, as he puts it. Dave and Jerzy enjoyed a great working band with usable convection being as high as 8000 ft with a maximum thermal strength of 7kts. Overall, the day was better than yesterday but cirrus ahead of an incoming front slowed Dave down at he end of the day. Daves' comment was: Almost as good as Uvalde but without the thunderstorms!


For tomorrow we decided to take a rest day because the forecast calls for a front to pass through the competition area and we don't want to tire out or pilots during training.