JB ,Nick Jones and Pete Sweetapple
representing Glorious Team Eagle and M5Matt resembling nothing in
particular arrived at the Herefordshire Gliding Club at Shobdon on
Friday evening ready for the start of Competition Enterprise on Saturday
morning. With our trailers parked near the end of the impressive lineup
of competitors gliders and signed in with the Comp Committee we retired
to Nick's luxurious caravan to discuss strategy over a cup of tea but
ended up going to the pub instead.
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| Luxurious accommodations of Team NHL |
In
the morning JB met a young lady called Zoe wandering the campsite
looking a wee bit lost and discovered that she was a junior competitor
from Lee on Solent GC and that she was also crewless. No that's not
Chinese for without a clue and anyway she was smart enough to latch onto
the cheeriest gang at the comp. Comp messaging system interrupted our
breakfast with a text notifying a request to grid before the 10am
briefing so we had to get our skates on. Tom Sides the master of perfect
timing arrived to bolster the NHL contingent just as the last wing pin
was slotted home, and we went off to the briefing that was anything but.
To be fair there was a vast amount of airfield operational info to drum
into the assembled masses, knowledge that would be necessary for us to
integrate into the daily comings and goings of a very active GA
airfield.
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| Rigged in time for rain |
Despite
some early patchy rain the weather forecast wasn't too bad but the
25knot wind was going to add complication and the task setters came up
with an ingenious arrangement of 10km concentric rings centered on
Presteigne. Most of the comp settled for battling between PRE and the
first 10km ring a number of times to rack up a few km while Justin Wills
who won the day set off down wind to slightly better weather and
covered 320km worth of ring crossing before landing out at Bidford. The
Eagle had battled valiantly in the stiff breeze and after almost an hour
in the air, managed to land back at the airfield. Zoe who was flying
her syndicate K6 also wrestled with the wind but ultimately landed out
and was retrieved by Tom, JB and Pete.
Sunday
was going to be much better which is partly why Justin didn't land out
at Great Yarmouth on Saturday and at briefing weather guru Dave Masson
filled the grid with optimism suggesting a 500km day. The task was
declared as Elbow, a yoyo type thing turning any BGA turnpoint to the
east of Shobdon between N52 and N53 then returning via SHO to turn any
BGA turnpoint to the Northwest of the site and so on and so forth. Bonus
points could be earned by visiting other gliding clubs along the way. A
common idea was to attempt a turn at Gransden Lodge bagging some bonus
points into the bargain and off tow after taking a 4knot climb to
cloudbase I set off hopeful of bagging Snowdon after getting back from
Cambridge. Initially the going was good but after Worcester the climbs
seemed further apart and harder to track down with good looking clouds
only indicating that a thermal had been there a bit earlier and a lot of
faffing ensued, this sticky bit was exacerbated by routing via
Snitterfield (bonus points) which added a 3500' Birmingham ceiling
airspace issue into the mix. Having dithered past Northampton which
dropped my task speed into the sixties I was becoming concerned with the
spreadout around Bedford and put the brakes on my plan of going to
Cambridge so at Bozeat (no I haven't heard of it either) I turned tail
for Shobdon.
Meenwhile
JB and Nick in the mighty Eagle threw caution to the persuasive tail
wind and charged off east bagging Bidford and Long Marsdon before
steeling their nerves for the battle back home. Nick's gentle
encouragement worked it's magic on JB who finally breathed a sigh of
relief as he called final to land back at Shobdon having completed 191km
on task and 15th place for the day.
Having
made it back to Shobdon I then continued west heading for Llandrindod
Wells and after a bit of field picking connected with the clouds which
now gave me a good run back east to Worcester and a long final glide
back to Shobdon to ultimately cover 485km. The winner of the day was
David Masson who covered a mere 620km. Enterprise certainly squeezes the
maximum out of a day. Rest day tomorrow, phew.
M5Matt |
| The end of day 1 Sky |
