Before I get started on today's task, we'll finish off Kerry's land-out and retrieve story from yesterday. After acertaining his location (with the help of the Tow-search plane), Kerry's car and trailer, and another vehicle with a crew for derigging left Chipman to retrieve him. I think about 5 people in all (the DG1000 is a big beast). The crew found Kerry on the highway trying to hitch-hike his way back to Chipman. He said it wasn't going that well, having only seen two vehicles pass in the previous hour. As we suspected yesterday, his phone had died. After landing in one of a number of suitable fields in the area, he set off looking for a neighbour's phone to use. The first place he tried had a big dog in the yard that looked neither friendly or approachable. After quite a bit more walking, he found the property owner, who told stories of two generations of his family finding gliders in their fields. The farmer had no problem with the retrieve, but did make a request that would be valid for all retrieves: that was, when entering and exiting the field with vehicles and trailers, to use different tracks in and out so as not to compress the soil as much.

So, on to day #2:

The weather forecast for the day was representing the effects of the cold front that passed through last night with the associated rain showers. The day would be similar to yesterday, with the scattered cu starting a little later, with a chance of over-development again later in the afternoon. The task assigned was another Assigned area task, the same task for both Club and FAI classes. The turn points were (area radius in brackets) Westlock (40 km), Vilna (30 km), and Vegreville (35 km). The task time would be 3:30 for Club, and 3:00 for FAI. The nominal distance would be 317 KM, with a minimum of 148 km and a maximum of 500 km. The club class launched first and early on found finding the lift difficult at times until the cu had matured a bit more. Rather than overdeveloping in the afternoon, it actually blued-out for a bit before recycling. No over-development or showers were encountered.

Evening:

We had a scheduled hamburger BBQ for supper followed by an "open mike" event that attracted some of our imbedded talent. Pictures of both are in the gallery.