Pete Startup 230 and Simon Minson SM decided that we ought to fly in a Regionals at least once just to say we'd done it, so after being convinced by our mate Rich Roberts from Brent Tor that Bidford was a good comp and there are always people happy to come and retrieve you we went for it, and got to prove this claim several times during the week!
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| Team Southwest (Jules Minson) |
The contest format is the Handicap Distance task type which is supposed to even out the different glider performances and keep them in a single class and it does this by having a different sized barrel around a common turnpoint for each different glider handicap.
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| Jetstream (netweather.tv) |
Unfortunately the jetstream sat in the wrong place all week and brought us unfavourable soaring conditions, very windy (too windy to even fly on 2 of the days), then just windy with added very heavy shower activity for the rest with just one day providing a good racing day, 3 other difficult days, and 5 days scrubbed. Another problem was that from launching the first glider to the start line opening was about 1 1/4 hours(with 5 tugs stream launching), and with a short weather window most of it disappeared during that time!
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| Gridding (Jules Minson) |
On the 'good' day we watched before gridding, gliders being filled with so much water it was bleeding from every orifice - but we're from Devon so we didn't bother. They seemed to go through this ritual most days working on the theory you can always dump it but you can't add it in flight. Task was a 241km task around Telford - Ledbury - Banbury and round a control point at Stratford and home.
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| 1st on the grid (Pete Startup) |
Considering we were flying unballasted relatively low handicap gliders I think we did ok, Pete coming 5th and Simon 10th in a field of 30 gliders at a x-c speed of around 90kph. Our overall positions at the end of the comp were Pete 15th and Simon 18th. There was only the one full scoring (1000 points) day, all the other flying days being devalued by not enough gliders getting past Point Y.
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| Competition Briefing (Simon Minson) |
What we did learn is that in competition the margins are very small and one poor decision in starting, routing or thermalling can make a big difference to your position. For example the difference between mine and Simon's positions was just 17 points and 2 minutes over a flight of about 2:45 hours!
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| Nice big fields (Simon Minson) |
So, plenty of field landing practice(that could be a long blog on it's own!), beautiful airfield, great catering, great people(who are more than happy to retrieve anyone, anytime), met loads of new people and caught up with some old friends too. Here's a link to the tasks and scores page if you're interested - https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/bidford-regionals-2022-bidford-2022/results I'll let the pictures tell the story. - Pete Startup
