The afternoon flight got off to a poor start. We were sent out to Goorambat to use the common launch point #2 for a pilot declared goal and fly on task. Unfortunately with all the rain, the oval was too soft to drive on and the task had to be changed.
The tasks were scrubbed and instead a Fly in was called, sending us all out into the country side to find our own wet patches to launch from.
It got interesting because all the met indicated that there should be an easterly to use at height but during the climb out we found a hard right turn that was not expected. This was at 4600ft. Everyone who found it balked and descended to about 3800ft which was about the best direction to the goal but was going to put those of us who launched to the east, well east of the goal.
In the end I calculated that I was going to be in the bottom half of the field if I stayed where I was and that I was going to miss the goal by about 1800m. Not good. I decided to put in a big climb and see what happened up high. It worked. The right hand turn was about 1000ft thick but it quickly came back around to the left and had us back on track.
I was really hoping that the other pilots down low would not see what I had done until it was too late for them. In the end it had to be obvious it was working for me and they started charging up behind me. At 6500ft I then had the challenge of timing the descent which even in a racer like the EX-65 was going to take 4 minutes. We were doing 24km/h so this is about 1200m of ground distance traveled while in the descent so getting the timing right is critical.
In the end I had to opt for a high drop from 5500 feet where if the marker is lost it is a no result. It was a high risk option but paid off with a result of about 260m which should be in the top five for the afternoon.
Great fun and good to have day one under our belts. Time for a sleep and do it all again in the morning.
