Day 1 of the 15m Nationals

Well, Day 1 has come and gone and we were lucky to get a day in at all. Heavy prolonged rain was pushing in from the west and we already had a fully overcast sky, so a 1.5 hour AAT was set. Surprisingly, after launch, we found lift to 7000ft over the ridge. However there was a maximum start height of 5000. It was clear that the best option was to start immediately, so about 5 minutes before the gate opened everyone dived down from cloudbase to join those already circling below 5000. Over here it is permissible to start out the top of the start cylinder (5 mile radius) and that is what most people did. I foolishly decided to leave 5 minutes later to let others do the thermal searching, but by the time I reached the first marked thermal it had dropped off significantly and from then on I was playing catchup from below and behind. I touched both areas and then headed 90 degrees off course to the only patch of sunshine and climbed slowly until I had a 28:1 glide home. Unfortunately with the headwind and widespread sink, this wasn't enough and I eventually plopped into a private airstrip on the outskirts of town, 3 miles short of the finish line. I was #2 into that field, quickly joined by 3 or 4 others.

My practice day outlanding almost ended in disaster for two separate reasons - firstly, as I pulled down the canopy and tried to lock it, the pins missed their slots slightly so I pulled back the levers for a second try. You might have guessed - I accidentally triggered the canopy emergency release, just as the tow plane (only 10 m in front of me) fired up the propeller. I grabbed the canopy rails with both hands and it took all my strength to stop it blowing back over my head. Of course the tow pilot was oblivious to my dilemma as I had no spare hand to call him on the radio, or pull the release. Fortunately, the other pilot who had landed at the same strip ran over and managed to hold the canopy until I had got the tuggie to power down.

Secondly, after we towed out back towards Mifflin, I heard a call on the radio "Are you right to go?" which I assumed was the tug pilot suggesting I should get off tow and let him return for pilot #2. I checked my glide - 28:1 and pulled the bung. It turned out that the call was from another tug pilot about to start a ground run from a different outlanding. Meanwhile I nervously watched the glide angle deteriorate in the moderate headwind (by this time it was 6:30 and all chance of lift had vanished). I resigned myself to the humiliation of requiring two retrieves on the same day, but then spotted a bonfire being set alight some miles ahead. Sure enough, I got there and found a couple of knots that got me back onto glide and thankfully the rest of the flight was uneventful! Here's a picture of the aerotow retrieve just before the dramas began...