Condor Racing
With no real flying this weekend due to weather, the regular Sunday evening Condor Racers took to the sunny skies over North Hill to try out the proposed new Club 100 task NH2- Knowstone - North Tawton - NH2. With Stewart busy at the moment, Dan set up the task for Chris to Host with a good variation in thermals. The conditions proved very realistic for Devon with some short-lived clouds and a fair amount of sink in between. The Club class grid consisted of some LS4a, ASW20 and Pegasus.
A few of the traces from Condor
As usual boy-racer Dan Hender was first to set off, followed by Mike Willmott, Simon Leeson, Chris Warnes and John Davies, Pete Harmer and Geoff Lawrence were trying the tactical late start (but this backfired slightly).
It was a fairly straightforward run into wind to the windfarm at Knowstone providing you didn't miss the newly forming cumuli, and similarly crosswind to North Tawton. The real fun came on judging the final glide to finish at NH2 above 2000ft QNH, with many decaying cumulus and large areas of sink.
Dan judged it perfectly (just) with a very creditable 54mins (for Pete Startup to aim for), but word had been passed back to be cautious and the next group found very little to top up in on the way back and so they had to slow down significantly to make the finish height.
Pete and Geoff benefited from the chat by deviating to follow a street back to Crediton, and getting high before setting off across the poor area. It will be interesting to compare experiences form real flying. - J&P
