Cordele, Georgia, Report Friday 18 May 07

Are we in Georgia? South Georgia? In May? Last night,
I think the temperatures dropped to the low 50's or
high 40's and today, they rose to the mid 80's. Ahh,
very nice. And very nice for soaring, too.

The CD decided for some manly tasks today. The forecast
called for blue skies and windy. Hmmm. This should
be interesting for a task in Sports Class for three
turnpoints and 191.74 miles. Blue. Windy. 191.74
miles. Ok, should I just hook up the trailer to the
car right now and have it prepared for some unlucky
soul (I'm crewless) to come get me?

By grid time, we started to see some 'holes' in the
weather forecast. Cu's were seen to the east. Then,
cu's could be seen to the northwest.

Weatherman/sniffer Ray Galloway is launched and soon,
he sends down good reports. The CD doesn't wait and
commands 'LAUNCH THE FLEET!'

Sports class is up front of the grid and I launched
about mid pack. It wasn't too long after launch that
I and others were at cloud base of about 6,500' msl.

The clouds to the first turnpoint of Hazelhurst (64
miles east and with a 20 mile cylinder) looked pretty
good. I 'rocketed' off (it's a relative term with
the way I normally fly) and felt as if I was doing
pretty good. Closer to the cylinder, I took a thermal,
but stopped at 5,500'. Dang, the clouds over here
dropped a thou. Continuing on, I found another ok
thermal, but I had to stop at 4,500'. Nasty trend.
Looking like OD above and a big ol' pine forests below.
The heck with this! Hit the short side of the 20
mile cylinder and turn southwest to the next point,
Tifton. The clouds look better that way. It's 62
miles to Tifton, center to center of turnpoint, but
I shaved 20 miles off of Hazelhurst. Aaargh, I had
to dig a bit to get away from those nasty pine forests
and the river there. The good pilots didn't mind the
low clouds and tall trees at all at the first turnpoint.
They just flew on in deep into the cylinder and turned
for the next.

The clouds were higher going to Tifton and I took it
deep. That's probably the only right decision I made.

Next turnpoint was Leesburg, about 45 miles from the
center of Tifton. I thought about getting some more
miles in its 15 mile cylinder, but on the way there,
the sky matched the forecast: Blue!

Harrumph. I got some altitude, around 6,000' and headed
into the blue. Since I was going to be over the 3
hour limit, I decided to turn for home. No use going
for more distance if I thought my speed wouldn't improve.
But wouldn't you know it, I got the highest thermal
of the day out in the blue. 7,600' msl! That set
me up for about a 30 mile glide home (ok, those of
you with ASW-27's and Ventii, etc. go ahead and laugh.)

Scores are up on the SSA webpage. You can see I'm
back to my normal flying and I came in a lousy ninth
for the day. Raw speed of 51.12 mph for 180.19 miles.
I haven't looked at the other class results yet, but
I bet they were screaming around their course. Ah,
but I have the 'luxury' of not having to mess with
water...

Congratulations, again, to Sam Giltner for winning
the day. 61.60 mph (raw) over a distance of 188.62
miles (raw.)

Also note the flights of Richard Owen, Wally Berry,
and Larry Goddard. All three flew over 200 miles.

One more day!

Ray Lovinggood
Motel Resident in Cordele, GA, USA