25.6.2014 – Wednesday, finally some action!

Finally we got a day when we can do what we came to do here; to have a gliding competition.

Weather was good enough, we got a grid on runway 30 again, which is quite great as there you can walk between grids. We have two parallel grids, and on runway 30 the towplanes are landing to other runway (RWY 08) and not between the grids like when the grid is on runway 26 or 08.

At briefing our “met-man” Jarkko told us about the tricky weather. It seems that weather was good at east from Räyskälä but unstable and easily overdeveloping, and at Räyskälä area clouds are quite thick and thermals would be weaker here. Because the weather was more stable at Räyskälä area, tasks were set north and south from Räyskälä. It was 2,5 AAT task, and that meant quite short gap between the last launch and first finishers.

Cloud base was about 950 m and sniffer reported weak thermals. When British guys heard this, they commented with happy faces: “so the weather is like home, let’s go”. And some others (Australian) were “oh sh*t, that’s bad”. Weather was clearly a bit tricky, and quite many landed out, especially in Club class.

Anyway it became valid competition day easily, we had Live Wednesday (=music, food and drinks) at the Hangar I, but I felt a bit tired and had a barbecue with friends.