Enthusiasm was high at breakfast this morning, the first sunny morning in several days.

In fact, it was sunny all day long, and those of us stuck on the ground at Chaves thought the weatherman got it wrong when he predicted 3/8 cumulus in the task area. But it turned out he was right on the money, as the pilots reported good cloud streets on the first leg of the 2.5 hour Assigned Area Tasks (the two classes got essentially the same Task).

The teams were gridded together, so both our Standard and 15 meter class pilots were able to form up before the start without much trouble. All six started around 1500, which turned out to be just a bit late to catch the best climbs of the day.

Our 15 meter guys stayed together and made good progress on the first leg, directly upwind. As the first Assigned Area was reached, first Robin and then Juan led out on a lines that didn’t pan out, and soon our quad became a pair and two solos. The leading pair, Fernando and Phil, enjoyed a nice run on the second leg, with climbs of 2 m/sec to 1900 meters.

Meanwhile, Al and Ryszard stayed together for the whole Task and came home within a few minutes of each other.

The scoresheet revealed that the right time to start was a fair bit earlier than our start times, and our team coach will have something to say about that at the team meeting tomorrow.”

#pagc17 #usa #15Mpilots pic by Maria Szemplinska