Results from yesterday show that it was a missed opportunity with most people near the top messing things up. Going into today's flight I am in 11th place, 800 points from the leader and only 500 points from second place. It is very tight at the top and things will change again soon.
There was a brief moment of excitement when I saw four markers on the table - we have not flown a quad task in Saga for years. If there is one disappointment here it is the lack of tasks that are often set, when the location and weather would allow many more.The excitement was short lived. It was still three tasks. Pilot Declared Goal, Judge Declared Goal and a Maximum Distance Double Drop. The XDD requiring the extra marker.
Sadly the opportunity for another task or two was missed - why the first marker of the XDD was not a FON I do not know, even the last one for that matter to make it five tasks from four markers. Oh well.
The PDG was also set as a memorial to Masashi Kakuda. I would love to win this task and good goal selection may have made it a reality.
The flight into the PDG got very congested with three of us fighting for position. In the end I won out and dropped closest on that goal with 2.2m. I have not heard better yet so fingers crossed for the winning result.
The JDG presented some challenge and in the end I took the safe option of dropping from height rather than trying to bomb all the way onto the surface. The winds were starting their change and I did not want to risk drifting off. The drop was 18.9m but on this task it was not good enough - scores are already up and it looks like 665 points..
The XDD was to be flown inside a box 2km wide by 1km deep. I approached the north east corner of the box and entered about 100m further south than the ideal location. It was then an almost straight flight to the diagonally opposite corner. Again, the exit point was not ideal but with the available winds it was not to bad. The best result would have been 2225m and my result will be 1770m. I think there will be a few people with no results.
