Canadian Nationals 2023

Day 10

Today's weather wrinkle was that the conditions were actually better than forecast.  At the morning meeting, there was some pessimism that it would be possible to fly, but by launch time there were cu and the sniffer reported 3500 MSL.  The gate opened and everyone headed out into a nice looking sky.

So, after a lot of rain days, we managed to get in the required 4 days with the final day looking like this:

Day 9

Day 9 was the third flying day and we are still optimistic that tomorrow will yield our 4th contest day.   Today the strong southwest winds washed out the Lake Erie shoreline making it very difficult to get into the second turnpoint.  For those that managed to get in and out of the second turnpoint, the conditions improved as they headed north to the third turnpoint, but the upwind final leg to the finish was a struggle for the club class.
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Day 8

The weather today included smoke, low clouds, high clouds and the possibiilty of thunderstorms around 3 pm.  After a second look at the weather at 1130 the day was canceled.  The storms never materialized, but the clouds and smoke did and the day was not good enough to support minimum task distances.
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Day 7

A 3 hr area task with large circles to the north and west was called today.  Lift was generally good and cloud base was over 5500 ft at start time and rose to 6000 later in the day.  There were a few wrinkles to deal with, starting with rain showers at the north end of the Toronto Soarig area along a converence line from Georgian Bay.  The leg SW to Stratford had smoke and high cloud reducing lift and creating large holes.  Fortunately, with the 6000 ft top of thermals one could keep moving forw...
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Day 6 - is now Day 1

We had a flying day today, and it was pretty good.  Despite the saturated fields there was good lift.  There were a few light showers in the first area around Stratford and some large blue holes to navigate, but good streets and generally honest clouds. There was concern that showers could develop along with cloud spreading out causing problems getting home after 4 pm.  As it turned out, there were some large holes, but also two good cloud streets heading towards Rockton from the final turn area...
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Day 5

The rain gauge showed 1.85 inches of rain fell on the airfield in 9 hours yesterday.  The bulk of it has flowed through the runway drainage system, but this morning there was still standing water in low spots on the runway. The day was soarable today, but with the runways unusable, the day was cancelled.
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Day 4

The storms to the west arrived over night and there has been a lot of rain. The rain gauge at the airport is reporting 1.34 inches so far, it is still raining the runways are flooded and getting worse!  No flying today.  In the last week we have had 2.4 inches of rain and 7.4 in the last month, making it one of the wettest summers in a long time.
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Day 3

Today, we flew.  Unfortunately, it took too long for condiions to develop to the point that a task could be flown.  Two sniffers were launched with the first at noon almost beating the towplane back to the ground.  The second sniffer launched around 1 PM was more successful managing to stay airborne for about 30 minutes under the first wispy cu.  At 1:30 a third sniffer was launched and was able to climb above 2500 ft AGL. The launch started around 2 PM and there were a few relights due to unrel...
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Day 2

After almost 1 inch of rain overnight, the runway is saturated with standing water in many locatons.  The soaring forecast was not great and they day was cancelled at the morning meeting.  As of 2 PM the clouds are silil too low to fly.Tonight we have dinner in the tent at 6 pm with wine provided by Pelee Island Winery and a keg of beer provided by Joerg Stieber.  
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The storms have arrived

A little later than originally forecast, but still a good line of storms and wind now at Rockton.
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