Human error - Day 3 wrap-up

Even though the weather wasn't all that great and the wind was still above 20 kts and strong enough to break up thermals, good speeds were achieved in all classes:

15m Class: Best speed: 118.47 kph
18m Class: Best speed: 119.51 kph
Open Class: Best speed: 121.17 kph

Jerzy (XG) came back a little earlier than expected. Initial calculations showed Jerzy's speed to be at 117 kph which put him in 7th place and also 7th place in the overall score. Unfortunately, after a long and excellent flight, Jerzy uploaded the previous day's flight to the scoring program. Even more unfortunately, after we were back at the hotel, I left my cell phone in the room while we were in the dining room, enjoying a special dinner our host had put on for us. We were just on our way to bed, when Chief Stewart Dick Bradley told me that he had been trying to reach me by phone all evening because there was a problem with Jerzy's log. Although the scorers had quit for the day, I decided we should rectify the situation as soon as possible and drove to the airport to upload the correct file. I also apologized for the mix-up. Hopefully they will not assess any penalty. For the moment Jerzy has dropped to the bottom of the score sheet. Hopefully tomorrow we will see Jerzy back in 7th place.

There was a bit of a tense wait for Dave and we were all relieved to hear "P8 on final glide".

Unfortunately, Dave had encountered a bit of trouble on the 420 km course which reduced his speed to 97 kph. Dave had set up the task in his on-board computer by modifying yesterday's AAT. In doing so, he missed resetting the radius of the last turn point from 1 km to the standard 500 m beer can. As a result he missed the observation zone by a little which resulted in 50 penalty points.

Both incidents show that we have to put procedures in place to eliminate slip-ups like these that have really nothing to do with flying but can still bite us badly.