Some days you just have to be put back in your place.
After a good morning I had a spring in my step, my confidence was high. Life and flying were good.
This afternoon I got hit in the nuts.
The flight had two tasks, a maximum distance within a scoring area and a Hesitation waltz using any of the goals in the scoring area for the maximum distance. The scoring area for the hesitation waltz was the entire competition map and the tasks could be flown in any order.
The winds called for another hight flight - right to the 6000ft ceiling. The would take us to the east enough to drop in and use the north easterly wind on the surface to run down through the scoring area and hopefully pick off one of the hesitation waltz goals too.
After the initial climb, I was not all that happy with my position in the pack and it was time to something heroic or settle for the bottom half of the pack.
I was also concerned because I was expecting the wind on the surface to turn more to the north or even fill in from the west like the upper winds.
I lined up one of the northern most HWZ goals and made a descent to the surface. The surface winds had increased significantly and we were now doing 20km/h form the north east still. I passed my first option about 400 to the west and decided that I could do better on one of the goals further south and increase my maximum distance result too.
I climbed back to 6000 feet only to find that the upper wind had now swung to the south west and I was flying back along my surface track and not getting far enough to the east to do any good.
With time ticking down towards sunset I made a very fast descent which will no doubt have people talking. The surface winds were the same as before but now I was 300m further west and with no hope of even seeing thee scoring area or any of the goals for the hesitation waltz.
In the end I flew past my original HWZ goal at about 700m and dropped the marker on a sand bank in the river right on the end of the time limit. The maximum distance is a no result because we never made it into the scoring area to drop a marker.
Bugger eh? Well we are off to do a night glow and drink some beer to commiserate this afternoon and celebrate the memory of Masashi and the win this morning.
