6 July - looking great for a contest day!

After a frontal passage last night (finally), and a bit of rain (graphic below thanks to Jean Richard), today is looking very good.  Forecast is for 3-4 kts of lift to 3,500 south of the Ottawa River, better in the Gatineau hills - though getting across might be interesting.  The 10 am update of both Dr Jack and XC Skies (two good soaring weather prediction programs) say it is better than the previous update. A nice SW wind is drying the standing water, and I think that either of the called tasks is doable.

You can see the task area on it, bounded by Thurso, Alfred, Alexandria... lots of water south of that; fairly dry in the hills.

Thanks to Lucile for the amazing Mango Chicken, rice, salad, and pie dinner...  Quite the feeding frenzy, and we have chicken for sandwiches today!  I'm still full.

Tasks - A is an Assigned Area Task, 2.5 hours, B is a Modified Assigned Speed Task, 2.5 hours.  Due to the intricacies of the scoring program, A says FAI, B says Club, but we're sending both classes on the same tasks (better thermal marking).  In another post, I will describe what AAT and MAT are...

A Task for both classes

 

B Task for all classes

The normal Saturday Gatineau operation is humming, the L-23 is flying students, the Puchacz is being cleaned prior to being pulled out to fly, the MSC towplane and our two are getting ready; grid time is 12:30 pm, and we will try to launch as quickly as we can, since the soaring forecast indicates that by 5 pm, the soaring day will be over.  But, in a great coincidence, tonight is the spaghetti dinner for the 2013 World Junior Team. 

Due to the generosity of WestJet, there is a raffle for two seats anywhere they fly... $25 per raffle ticket, 2 for $40.  I have my tickets - WestJet flies to Hawaii, and that would be very nice in February!  WestJet has been a strong supporter of competitive soaring in Canada, supporting similar draws for the Senior and Junior teams, and I think it's only right that when you spend your hard-earned dollars for travel in Canada, you support someone who supports us so well (this is a personal opinion).

Grid is at 12:30pm.  We're having trouble with the SPOT tracker, but the Varicalc trackers are working very well, do a report every 4 secs, and give position, altitude, and past track... very easy to follow the race with this system; it's on the Nationals website.

Dan