US Soaring Team WGC Reports & Results

Being the Junior Team Captain certainly has its ups and downs. Three days ago Mike and Garret took first and second place respectively and all was sweetness and light. Yesterday was less that sweetness and light as the team had a difficult day since Mike made it home, but more than 10k/hr behind the leader and Garret landed out about 12 K from the finish. Amazingly enough Garret landed in the exact same field that he had landed in earlier in the contest. I am starting to wonder if some enemy pilots installed a Garret magnet in that field. At this point the farmer must be getting a bit paranoid about being hit by itinerant USA gliders and I hope that he does not think of charging aircraft rental fees. Both pilots had a difficult time on a strange day. They did quite well for the first half of the task even catching up with the leaders after starting after them. Unfortunately, they went for one cloud and Mike and Garret went for another and the flight went south from there. At one point they were 1000 feet below and they had the bubble die while it boomed if you were higher. In general we missed the timing and it cost us.

The good news is that though the team dropped in the placings they did not lose a huge amount of points so we are still in the game. Last night we had a team meeting and we have an upbeat mood and are aggressively looking forward to more flying. Sport psychology research say that when a team has a poor performance in the middle of a contest they become vulnerable to giving up and losing their motivation. That has not happened to our team and both Mike and Garret are looking forward to today's flight which is a three sector assigned area task. We seem to do better on that type of task so if the weather cooperates we have an opportunity to pick up some points.

At this point Mike is in 17th and Garret in 23rd. I have included their traces so you can see how difficult the flight actually was. At one point they escaped from 700 feet AGL. The weather for tomorrow looks pretty bad with rain forecast, but the next days after that are quite promising. Mike's log. Garret's log.

Cheers from the UK,

Bob Leve

. See the Junior Team web page here and the WGC official site here.

Captions for photos: From top to bottom: 1. Mike over English countryside. 2. Ryan and Renee waiting for their pilots. About the pictures. Images are taken by the U.S. Team Captain and other U.S. Team Members. Some of the images used here can be found on the official website and were taken by one of several excellent contributors.
U.S. Soaring Team Standings
Class	Pilot	Sailplane	Contest Number	Day Place & Points	Overall Place & Points
Junior	Garret Willat	LS-8 18	L58		23rd 3130
Junior	Mike Westbrook	ASW-28	C6		17th 3404
				See the official scores here
Points of Interest
ABOUT DAY REPORTS The U.S. Team Day Reports are brought to you by the US Soaring Team and hard working volunteer Frank Whiteley. Thank you Frank!
YOUR TEAM SUPPORT All US team members would like to thank those of you who have contributed to make participation in these international events possible. If you have not contributed to the team please consider making one! To see how, visit the U.S. Team Funding page here and the Robertson Trust Web here.
U.S. TEAM COMMITTEE The U.S. Team Committee has been working to establish a more stable management structure and better resources for our soaring teams. The objective are more transparent, accountable, sustainable and competitive United States soaring teams. See the full information on the new U.S. Team Committee here.
U.S. TEAM E-NEWS Sign up today for the U.S. Team E-NEWS. This electronic newsletter is sent out roughly quarterly and covers all the team news. The sign up process is simple - start by clicking here.
TEAM NEWS, HISTORY & ARCHIVE To catch up on all the news for the U.S. World Soaring Teams see the U.S. Team News. See the U.S. Team Archive for team background since 1950. As part of the Archive tour see the U.S. Team History page for a complete listing of US Teams since 1950 or the World Champions page for a complete listing of champions since 1937.
2005 Junior Team Sponsors & Helpers

The Junior Team would like to thank their sponsors who are providing products for the team's use.

Roy McMaster, as the US distributor for SeeYou, the flight planning, analysis and in-flight software is personally is sponsoring copies of SeeYou for the Junior Team. Contact Roy directly via email by clicking here.

Kevin Brooker of Peetot Pants is supplying the team uniforms and several pairs of his innovative pants. See Kevin's web site for more on these pants that allow you to watch your P's and Cu's here.

Many thanks to the Jaguar and Land Rover Engineering teams in England for arranging crew vehicles for the US Junior team. This went a long way toward helping the junior team finances.

Country and Contest Site

In 2005, The Soaring Centre, in association with the BGA, will be hosting the 5th Junior World Gliding Championships. This will be the first International gliding championships to be held in the UK in over a generation. The Soaring Centre, has with 400 members and a large fleet of modern glassfibre sailplanes.

Situated in the heart of the Midlands, the airfield is only 3 miles from the major motorway networks, and 1/2 mile from Husbands Bosworth village, making access easy from any part of the country.