Chipman Nats Day 7 - Final Day
Final Day, and it looked like it would be a great one (and it was!). The weather was forecast to be like the previous few days. The pilots returning all raved about the strength and prevalence of the thermals.
The daily winners today were:
Club Class
Marian Rakusann, averaged 126 kph over 379 kms for 1000 points
Ryan Wood, averaged 95 kph over 284 kms for 964 points
Jay Allardyce, averaged 114 kph over 342 kms for 947 points
FAI Class
Joerg Stieber, averaged 149 kph over 526 kms for 1000 points
Team WRT (Branko Stojkovic, Pavan Kumar), averaged 129 kph over 462 kms for 928 points
Christopher Gough, averaged 130 kph over 456 kms for 923 points
The overall winners and the points they achieved can be seen above under "Champions".
The close contest between Joerg and Chris was resolved today, with Joerg regaining the lead, and only beating Chris by 62 points!
Third place overall in the FAI class was "Team WRT", flying the Edmonton Soaring Club's DG1000. With Branko Stojkovic as the lead, the second pilot was a combination of Ray Troppman and Pavan Kumar.
The quality of the contest can be seen in the numbers, the top three in each class all scored over 6000 points; in the FAI class, it was high-6000's. On this our last contest day, Joerg scored the 9th-best flight on the OLC, followed by Branko/Pavan at 15th place, and Chris at 16. Chipman Airport ranks the highest in Canada now (by a factor of over 3) for the number of points flown, and rates the 3rd highest in North America as of the contest end.
I think all who participated would rank this contest as a great one - from the facilities, the support team, the meals provided, and of course the weather which cooperated to provide what was probably some of the best contest flying ever seen in Canada.
Our awards banquet tonight was put on by the local "Ukrainian Village". The Chipman area, west-central Alberta, was settled by many Ukrainian immigrants from the late 1800's until the mid-1900's. The heritage and culture still runs strong in the area, and we were provided with a great meal of Ukrainian foods.
The links below show some video from our contest as compiled by the local Global TV station, and of the Awards and Recognition presentations by Bruce Friesen, the Contest Director:
Awards and Recognition (Youtube, 17 minutes)
Global TV Edmonton came to Chipman and flimed a bit about the contest.
Chipman Nats Day 6
The weather has been, well, familiar. Starting blue, scattered cumulous forming around noon, bases 9-12K. Light winds forecast for today. Forecast was for a good day, and a good task was planned - same one for both Club (3:30) and FAI (3:00) classes: Minimum distance of 250 km, max distance of 743, with a nominal distance of 482 kms. Turnpoints were Newbrook (66 km, 40 km radius), Barrhead (100 kms, 50 km radius), Duvernay (184 kms, 30 km radius), Holden (72 kms, 30 km radius) and back to Chipma...
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Chipman Nats Day 5
The day started similar to yesterday, blue! The forecast was similar, but perhaps without as much cloud. Cloudbases were forecast to be quite high, around 10K. The tasks set were a little less ambitious than yesterday: FAI Task (area) was 4 turnpoints and return: Kinsella (106km, 20km radius); Alliance (65 km, 35km radius); Bashaw (81km, 30 km radius); Holden (90km, 25km radius); return to Chipman (58km, 2 km radius). Distances were minimum of 281km, maximum of 553km, and the optimal distance wa...
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Chipman Nats Day 4
Under the influence of high pressure, we woke up to blue skies this morning. The forecast was looking good, well-deeloped cu, tops near 10K, good lift forecast, winds from the northwest 20kmh or so. There was a buzz - talk of an earlier start even, an great day was anticipated. The task committee came up with a two-turn triangle area task (same task for both Club and FAI classes; 4:00 and 4:30 respectively), turn points Paradise Valley (170 km, 80 km radius), Stettler (185 km, 90 km radius), the...
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Chipman Nats - Another cancelled day, May 30
The wind was blowing from the north when we awoke this morning, and the sky was full of broken clouds - almost looked like we were heading for rapid overdevelopment. What was really happening was a high pressure area moving across northern Alberta, and there was nothing but blue heading our way. The contest committee decided it was not the right day for a contest, with infrequent thermals, a narrow lift band, and strong northerly winds. After breaking the bad news about the weather at the pilot...
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Chipman Nats - Cancelled Day May 29.
The bad news for this morning was that the beer fridge was not keeping the beer cold. Crisis! Our day started early today with a pancake (w/sausages,eggs, etc.) breakfast in the clubhose. The skies had cleared overnight, but by breakfast time, there were clouds visibly building to the west. Not vertically, just flat things, spreading out, covering the ground. The clouds hadn't yet arrived by grid time (11:30), so the fleet lined up for a planned noon start. The weather forecast had predicted a m...
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Chipman Nats Day 3
By the start of the morning pilot's meeting, 10 AM, there was already a good line of cumulus north of us along the Saskatchewan River valley. The forecast for the day was to have scattered cu my the predicted launch time of noon. Cloudbase would start around 6-7K and climb to 9K or more within a short time. The variable amounts of moisture on the ground may affect the base differently over the course. The winds were expected to start off strongly, with gusts to 35 from the NW. The launch crew i...
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Chipman Nats - Rest Day
The weather forecast wasn't looking good for today, so it was decided yesterday that today would be a rest day with no contest flying. Joerg Stieber recalled that he saw the first Top Gun movie while attending the Canadian Nationals at Chipman in 1987 (Tony Burton and our Contest Director, Bruce Friesen, also competed in the Chipman Nats in 1987). So, a gang of pilots took advantage of the day off and drove in to Edmonton to catch the latest Top Gun movie on Imax. The sun was hidden behind a hig...
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Chipman Nats Day 2
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 pr...
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Chipman Nats Day 1
The weather forecast for the day was iffy: the forecast was for over-development with thundershowers forecast for later afternoon. There were two separate assigned area tasks prepared for the day for the Club and FAI classes. A total of 25 gliders were launched. For the club class, the turn areas were 40 kms, the nominal distance was 274 kms, with a minimum distance of 144 km and maximum distance of 415 kms. The FAI class had turn areas of 50 kms, nominal distance of 350 kms, minimum of 185, max...
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