US Soaring Team WGC Reports & Results

I don't know how Mike and Garret did as well as they did yesterday. The day was forecast to be great, and it was for the first hour of the task and then the sky went south and it was a real struggle. There aren't really ridges in the English Midlands as it is more of undulations in the land. Nevertheless, Garret managed to ridge soar something when he was down at Less than 200 feet and eventually he even found a thermal and got away.

Perhaps you can some idea of the day by the fact that only 9 out of 30 pilots finished and if you look at their SeeYou traces you will wonder. In the end Mike landed out about 2/3 of the way through the task at a local airport (No, in international competitions one does not get 25 points for an airport landing). Garret struggled on and was one of the nine to finish the task. If you look at his final glide trace you can see that it was an attention getting finish. By the time he finished Garret looked absolutely exhausted. To rest up and get to bed early we ate a dinner with lots of protein and carbs at the cottage and everyone fell into bed rather quickly. Ryan and I went on the retrieve to get Mike and it wasn't' the quickest drive as English highways don't seem to carry a great deal of information for us American type minds. That is a long winded way of saying we got lost. Garret's log. Mike's log.

By the end of the day the scores were tossed about in terms of the overall, but Garret moved from 22nd to 16th. Mike fell back from 17th to 22nd. I told them that they have to stop switching positions as that doesn't help our overall scores very much. In terms of day scores Garret was ninth with 959 points and Mike was 29th with 486.

If you take a look at yesterday's SeeYou traces on the 3-D mode you will get some idea as to how many airspace restrictions there are here. It looks like they are flying amongst a series of walls and cylinders scattered about the terrain in no particular order. It is a testament to all the pilots attentive skills that they have not had very many airspace scoring violations.

Hugh, our official weather forecaster basically threw up his hands in trying to forecast the weather today. He finished his talk by saying, "I might be spot on about this forecast or I might be completely wrong. Let me know if you could." Not very reassuring words for the pilots!! Today's task is a three sector task with a minimum distance of 113K and a max of 426K. As you can see it is rather vague, but we have discussed the problems such as parachute zones and a 3500 foot sector and Mike and Garret have a plan. We did very well on the last three sector task so we will keep optimistic today.

Yesterday we decided that Mike and Garret would become "Pirates of the Air", and rape thermals and pillage clouds. Unfortunately, I think the thermals and clouds got their share of revenge yesterday and the only pirate-like thing that happened was when they were muttering "Aaarrrguhh" as Mike landed out and Garret watched the ground reach up for him on his final glide. So far the score is one to one. English airport beat Mike, Garret conquers grasping ground.

Update!

The weather looked really drippy and by 1400 I was sure they were going to scrub, but instead they lowered the sector task to 2 1/2 hours and the guys left at 1500. Wish them luck on a very iffy day. I did hear them boast about a 1/2 knot thermal before the start. I think that all the crews and captains will be rescuing lots of plastic gliders from local fields. Then again, this is the UK and the weather can change in the space of a blink. Of course, ceiling is 2700 AGL so that will make for some interesting short glides.

Cheers (I hope)

Bob Leve

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

Captions for photos: From top to bottom: N/A 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	1st 805	15th 4895
Junior	Mike Westbrook	ASW-28	C6	19th 667	23rd 4558
				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.
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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.