This morning I was sad, sad, sad that this amazing adventure was coming to an end. That sadness quickly turned into excitement as I was in the front of the grid and had a beautiful sky ahead of me.
Today I let my music play for the first hour or so of my flight, until the sky became more crowded and I needed to focus more. That hour might have been my favorite hour of my flying career. I had time to reflect on all of the people who have helped me get here. At one point or another I recalled very specific advice from at least a dozen mentors. I heard Roy “don’t lose big” I heard my Dad “fly the plane” I heard Uncle Hank “watch out for that post stress stupidity” I heard Heinz “check the upwind sunny side of the cloud” I thought back to my thermal lessons with Garret Willet, I remembered “dive towards the sun” and “check the high ground” I heard Daniel and Noah tell me “keep with the gaggle, and don’t start first”, all of these bits of advice helped me every single day and of course actually hearing my captain Tom’s voice providing me real time information. Today I felt all of the pride and support from every single person that has helped me get here and I am glad that I was able to do my best. I cannot thank everyone enough for the support and help provided to me! It took a lot of effort from a lot of people to make this happen and I hope I did well enough to warrant such hard work.
My final position was 26th of 45. I would have like to have placed better and I know that if we were to start the contest over again with how much I’ve learned I know that I could have been top 15.

My Flight:
The flight went okay today, 316k @ 102kph, It’s amazing how quickly 64mph starts to feel average. I had a great start with Mark and we just about maxed out the first turn just as the flight was starting to feel like a repeat of yesterday we had to fly around/through some rain cells and that hurt our performance and got us separated. My second turn felt sloppy, not all that direct with a decent amount of meandering and it seemed like more sink that lift. I limped along into the third turn and lick the third turn and turned down wind to make up some speed. I finally caught a decent thermal and had a good down wind energy line. Looking ahead at the beautiful cloud street that I couldn’t take, there would have been no way to get back home if I had stayed on it, so I went to the middle of the cylinder and made for home. On a marginal glide at risk of finishing too soon I made the decision to turn my back to the airport and head for the clouds at the back of the sector. Lower, lower, lower I go 15k from home on my last flight 1,300 feet agl thinking I blew everything in the last 5 minutes of the last day. Then beep…beep… beep beep… bebebebebeeebebeeep and I got the altitude I needed plus a couple extra hundred because I knew I had a stiff headwind and dead air to push through and with a quick call of “11 finish”, I was home.

All said and done I went on 15 tasks, flew for 73.2 hours, and had a total of 4,379km distance or 2,720 miles. (its only 2,104m from NYC to Seattle). 7 of my tasks were over 300k. 10 of my flight were longer that 5 hours. People told me Consistency is key, well out of my 12 scored tasks only one was slower than 60mph, and it was 59mph and my spread was 59mph- 69mph and that is just about as consistent as I could possibly have hoped for.

Final thoughts
The amount that I was able to learn and the distance that I was able to fly was absolutely
incredible. The learning curve was quite steep but I was able to cope rather well. The fact that this is
a full team effort was the biggest shock to me. Being able to have Tom on the ground tracking the fleet live and relay info straight to me was invaluable. It changes the strategy, changes the game. Flying with Mark might have been my favorite new skill, when it works we are both faster for it. Again this is something that we do not have back home. Jr cross country pilots, another thing we do not have back home. Even at Harris Hill, with arguable the best Jr program in the country we do not have hardly any consistent xc pilots, and certainly not any that practice team flying. If training for the 2024 JWGC in Poland starts tomorrow then I am going to need some help. So I have set a few new goals:
First, practice team flying with whomever I can.
Second: connect with my fellow juniors and get more people eligible to compete so we have a strong team next time.
And Third: help grow this sport in any way I can. After seeing all that goes on here I am convinced
that it is something team USA can improve upon if we make this a priority.
I cannot wait to begin working towards this new goal!

-David McMaster

You can find the latest contest scores at:
https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/junior-world-gliding-championships-2022-tabor-2022/results

For the latest news from the JWGC:
https://www.ssa.org/12th-junior-world-gliding-championships/