Well today I think I posted my fastest ever task speed - 85mph or 138km/h. The task was an AAT down to Sweetwater then up to Flannigan. Another spectacular day where it was worth pushing hard to find only the very best thermals. There was also a lot of strong sink around and in hindsight I could have done better at avoiding that. The other key factor was the streeting - there was one very obvious street that ran to the south east of the first area. It worked great on the way south and even better on the way back. Just east of Reno at 14,000 I had a SouthWest Air jet descending into Reno fly straight over the top of me about 1000ft above. We were both in Class E but I'm sure he wouldn't have seen me. He certainly didn't mention it on the radio.
One complication in this comp is that the military has been blocking GPS signals at various times each day. Today I had a 40 minute gap in my trace and another of 10 minutes or so. Luckily the gaps were not in the AAT areas, but in transition between them or it could have been very expensive points-wise. Several people have had their start times estimated because they had no GPS coverage when they started.
I was originally planning to just nick the northern area because it looked completely dead, and I had the height to do so but would come in early. So I pushed in until I had 15:1 glide home and then turned. The final glide is complicated by the high terrain, so I actually had to slow down until about 12:1 to clear the mountain, then dive home as fast as I dared in the rough conditions. As soon as I pulled up over the finish line I was in about 6kts again and the clouds worked until about 8pm with spectacular wave setting up as well (see Dave's photo).
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