GTA race fans,

Well the next time someone suggests that I do the scoring with 
Winscore I will tell them that I would rather swallow the large
 print version of the entire FARs followed by a chaser of 
Metamucil then assemble a grid of Grob 103s in the Sahara
 desert... despite that, the weekend's scores are attached,
 the web site has them posted along with most of the flight
 recordings [see the hall of fame page].

May 5&6 at Moontown was yet another great weekend.
  The HSC does a great job of hosting us, the Spaghetti dinner
 was a nice social event.  It was good to see Rand again.  
I even introduced Francois to John Murphy who is getting back
 into soaring, as it turns out they have flown together for years.
  Also Bill Elliot is back too.  Welcome back both of you.  
We also got to sip wine around the Carter's RV.

The winning streak for Tim Larsen is in full swing since 
he is up to 3 in a row.  B Class is shaping up well, on Sunday 
we had one of the biggest B class grids I've seen with 6 contestants.

On Saturday a full high cirrus deck moved in, and we got timid 
and reduced the task to a 2 hour POST for A with 1.5hrs for B.  
However the conditions improved as we got to 7000MSL+ with CUs 
under the deck!  If the high deck had not been there we 
probably would have had 9000msl.  FP made the best decision 
to fly to the one really nice corner of the sky where there 
was little overcast, by doing a 15mile glide to get up toward 
Winchester, then he proceeded on across the plateau to Marion 
County, then to Matthews field in the Sequachie Valley, back 
home via Sewanee.  149miles at a raw speed of 63.5mph on a day 
we thought was a wash out.   I think I will mimic this guy more, 
do not laugh when you also see me washing my wings with Evian!
Brad took 3d and Gary 2nd as they both had good flights.

I had a decent flight with 118 miles that would have given me 716 
points and a speed that would have beat Larry for the first time.  
I tried a 26.5 mile final glide that got me back so low that I had 
to do a rolling finish.  At the pilot's meeting we said the finish 
cylinder had a floor to it which I busted, so I am scoring this as 
a landout at the edge of the finish cylinder and taking a 260 point 
penalty.  Although my low return was unintentional, I want to make 
the point that we need to keep all the safety related rules as our 
top priority.

In B class Tim Larsen left the pack behind and took 1000 points.  
Kevin had the longest handicapped distance, allowing him to take 
2nd place even though he landed out in Fayetteville.  That is a 
situation you do not find too often.  John Murphy got 3rd.


On Sunday it looked like a repeat of Saturday's good conditions.
Since Winchester TN was so beautiful with the lake and mountains 
we sent A class back up there Sunday.  Gary and I  both made good 
progress on the 38mile first leg, then the "wind just quit" on us 
and we had to land at Fayetteville.  I had 51mph up to the landout 
and was hoping to make some points.   Bill Elliot and Francois 
escaped the landouts, but just barely for FP.  As conditions 
weakened up north, FP left Fayetteville confident that he had 
final glide make to the next turnpoint, Saturn Rocket.  You can 
see in his trace how his straight confident glide changes to a 
search for lift at the moment he realized that "Saturn rocket" 
was the name of an object, not an airport!

Late in the day I had aeroretrived from Fayetteville and was 
gliding back thinking that maybe the whole area had shut down, 
when I took a 5.1 knot thermal 3300 feet up to 7000msl stopping 
there in disgust because I could have really used it about an 
hour before.  The good news was that I started hearing 
"4 miles out" from B class.  B Class had better conditions in 
their task area and it is great to see the 6 gliders battle it 
out.   One of those radio calls was from HS who smoked the field 
with 9.5mph more than his closest competitor!
Watch out guys, as you may notice that HS got 41.65hmph, beating
 the A class winner FP's 40.46hmph!  I do not recall seeing a B 
class pilot beating a member of the US team before.  
(Tim did you borrow some Evian?)

Dieter took second place with 791 points with the longest 
flight of 87hmi.  Gordon Ewart flew his 1-26 into 3rd place, 
glad to have a GTA newbee in the mix.

On another safety related note we have started a new habit of 
requiring a Critical Assembly Check each Day before flying.


See you at then next race, 3 days at Cordele for memorial day.

ruf