Well the lack of blog posts are due to the fact that we have been flying and sleeping and not much else.
After all the canceled flights and a single flight back on Wednesday, Thursday finally turned it on with a full day of flights.
The AM flight on Thursday was a full five tasks. Our results for those were slightly better than they felt from the basket and in the end we had a healthy 3800 points from the possible 5000 including a task win for me with a 1.35m result.
The PM flight saw another three markers on the table at briefing. Again, conditions were challenging and the field was split with half attempting the two hesitation waltz tasks first while the others opted to try the fly-in part of the flight first.
I picked up two great hesitation waltz results, both around the 7m mark for 989 and 988 points for each. The fly-in part of the task did not work for me but the 418 points was still better than nothing.
At the end of the day we were in 13th place, up from 65th after day 1.
Friday morning and we had another four tasks to fly.
Unfortunately nothing really went to plan today and I am not looking forward to seeing the results.
The first task was pilot declared goal which I missed by about 150m - not good when the first 20 places are generally within 10m of the target.
This had me set up too far to the right for the next hesitation waltz goal which I thne missed by 600m. Again pretty depressing when you can see the pile of markers around the target from the other competitors.
The third task was a fly in to the field for a minimum distance double drop. There was complicated little scoring area and the job was to drop two markers as close together as you can but with each in a separate box marked on the field.
I saw it off in the distance somewhere but never go closer than about 4km. Fortunately I think only about 10 people did.
The final task was an elbow where we had to cross a road, fly for 15 minutes then achieve the greatest change in direction we could after flying for another 15 minutes. Flying right back on yourself or 180 degrees change in direction is best.
We had a cunning plan based on all the winds going the wrong direction I had already found during the morning.
It did not work. We achieved about 56 degrees change in direction and have heard of plenty of others who got the 180 degrees.
Right now it is time to get some sleep and hope that we get the last two flights in this competition before the weather turns to crap again. It is already quite windy outside so we will just have to wait and see if we get any more flying.
