Sunday 24.4.2011 – 2nd Competition day
The Easter. This morning looked like all the mornings before, sun was shining and sky was quite clear. So it will be “another great gliding day”.
Even the weather looked the same, it didn’t feel the same as days before. It was colder and windy, so something is happening. In briefing Vladimir thanked everybody for safe flying and gave a 2,5 hour AAT task. He said that if the weather isn’t developing as they think it will, they will shorten the task time. Launches were about to start at 12:30 but were postponed until 13:00. They had said it has to be +24 C for the thermals to start, and surely the weather didn’t feel that warm when launches started. Task time was shortened in 2 hours, as we were expecting.
We heard our Finns talking on the radio when they were flying, because they stayed so close to the airfield. They said that the weather isn’t that good. Even they got pretty good altitude for starting the task, weather wasn’t that good on the route. So after 1,5 flying they started landing back with not so good distances. Harri on GN managed to fly to the first turnpoint (area) but they got very low on the other area and had to land out. He said same thing of the weather, that it wasn’t good enough for so long task.
When we sat on the terrace, we heard that there is coming a thunderstorm from North. And so we decided to put all gliders in trailers. That was good decision I think, as when we started, we could see first lightings. When we were having dinner, it was pouring rain.
We saw weather radars and Monday is 50-50, flying or not. I have a feeling that everybody would appreciate resting day, but let’s see what tomorrow brings.