[US] Standard Class Nationals update from Cordele for Thursday

The 2008 Standard Class Nationals ended with a whimper today.
Despite good air in the task area, upper level clouds began to clamp
down heating during the morning. By noon, there was a thickening
cirrus deck, though we could see vultures and hawks beginning to
thermal.

The CD sent up Markus Wegner from the MGSA as the sniffer. His first
flight ended quickly. He was sent back up a little after 1 pm, and
this time he stuck. However, he never reached 2,300 AGL, the minumum
criteria for launching the fleet. At about 2:30, it became obvious to
everyone that this was not going to work, and CD McQuigg cancelled the
day.

Despite the task cancellation, it would be fair to to say that there
was heated competition today. Given the weak conditions, there was a
real question as to whether the sniffer would beat the towplane
back. This quickly turned into a "sniffer duration pool", and money
was collected. Markus' first flight lasted only 16 minutes and
change, and Mark Keene was the lucky winner with a guess that was only
10 seconds off.

A second pool formed for the second sniffer flight, but we were all
disappointed when his flight exceeded all expectations (better than 30
minutes and still going). Given the rules that the guesses were "up
to but not over" the flight duration, it was decided to donate all of
the money to the line crew fund.

Thus, the contest ended with the following results:

1 3855 XM Mike Smith
2 3840 JW Jae Walker
3 3763 PG Phil Gaisford
4 3742 CG Chip Garner
5 3712 F1 Dave Springford

That's all folks.

P3

On May 22, 1:59*pm, Papa3 wrote:
The 2008 Standard Class Nationals ended with a whimper today.

Thanks for the reports!

Andy (GY)