This is the pit area between circles three and four.
By Matthew Neumann
Today, contestants were greeted with cool temps in the low 60's. It was cool enough that I even warmed the vent air just a bit in the car. No AC was needed this morning. On the way back to the motel, however, the car's AC was set to max, with all nozzles pointed at me!
The winds were extremely light through most of the day. We did get some gusts here and there, but nothing super-exciting. The winds could not make up their mind which way they wanted to go…including the gusts. You could have a light breeze in one direction and suddenly get a 7 or 8 mph gust 90 degrees to that. That was the biggest issue of the day.
In my first flight, the wind shifted and I wound up doing a lot of the pattern with the super-light wind in my face. It was a bit of a challenge to do so. We need line tension in order to control the planes. When the wind blows the plane at you, you lose some tension. It was not enough wind to lose total control, but it was not as positive as I would have liked.
As the heat rose, so did the thermal activity, which increased the wind changes. I hate thermals. Not to mention that thermals add some turbulence to the mix. During my second flight, I again had a wind direction change. This time it was strong enough that I had to move the judges. There was a mix up and they moved the wrong way. I was trying to fly and direct traffic at the same time. It was an interesting flight for sure. Oh, did I mention I had some dust devils move through the circle while I was flying the second flight? This made life even more interesting because they would make the plane suddenly bounce without warning. I certainly had to be on my toes.
The last bit of weather problems we had to contend with at the beginning was fog. LOTS OF FOG! When driving to the field, I noticed patches where visibility might be down to a mile maybe half a mile. It was enough that you had to watch out while driving, but it was nothing that would impede flying. That changed. As time got closer to 8 o’clock in the morning, the official start time, the fog rolled in even thicker. It looked like a bad horror movie. It was so thick that you could not see the plane that was flying on the other side of the circle. You could barely make out the pilot, but that was it. The pilot could see the plane but not much beyond that. It got so thick that I could see the water droplets suspended in the air against dark clothing. Weird. Because of the thick fog, the start time was delayed a half an hour.
Tuesday is the day that official flights started. The Open class is divided into four groups. These groups are seeded so that you have an equal number of good fliers in each group. Each pilot can fly two flights per day. The best score from each day is then added together to determine the ranking in each group. The top five pilots from each group will then move on to Thursday for top-20 day.
The Advanced group, however, is divided into three groups, since there are less of them. The top six pilots from those groups move on to the top-18 contest on Thursday. Again, each pilot can fly two flights per day and the best score from each day is added together for the final ranking. Some pilots who think their score is good enough, will opt to skip the second flight. This helps speed things along and keeps the judges from staying out in the heat too long. This is not so common on the first day of qualifying…especially if the weather holds. On Wednesday many more pilots will pass on their second flight once they figure they are in. This is especially true if the weather turns sour. But that is tomorrow.
We did have one oops. One pilot made an error and skidded his airplane across the pavement. We are supposed to fly five feet above the ground for the bottom of our maneuvers. He flew exactly five feet too low!
During today's competition the Concours award was given out. This is the pilots’ choice award for the best looking airplane. We voted on this award yesterday during the appearance points judging. This years’ winner is Don Jenkins. Congrats to him. This is his first Concours award…and it is well deserved.
So this ends the first day of qualifying. At this point, we are starting to get a feel for who has things working and who does not. Tomorrow is another day and things can change in a hurry…just like the wind direction today.
