Club Class Nationals & Region 3 Sports Class Competition

摘要

Contestants arrived Friday at Dansville, NY, located about 50 miles south of Rochester, NY and at the western most southern tip of the Finger Lakes Region. The weather had been rainy for the last couple of weeks and the practice day was generally IFR with light rain. Arriving to a contest in bad weather tends to give us hope of good contest weather forecast to follow. The friendly members of the Finger Lakes Soaring Club always provide a fun contest with great meals in friendly, landable terrain. For Saturday, August 4th, this was the first contest day for the Club Class Nationals and a practice day for the Region 3 Sports Class Regional Competition. At the morning pilots' meeting, Phil Chidekel, our weatherman, noted that cloud bases of 5,500 ft MSL were expected with areas of overdevelopment (OD) possible later in the afternoon. A TAT was assigned for the Club Class with 17 Ham-mondsport Airport, 30 Greenwood Village, 51 Coye Airstrip, 22 Avoca Airstrip, and return. This 3 hr TAT had a minimum of 72 nm and a maximum 209 nm. An interesting note is that poor Richard Kaleta, FZ, mixed up his turnpoint order and went from Hammondsport to Coye. He unfortunately flew through the heavy rain showers and was forced to land out at Middlesex Airstrip. He didn't realize that he went the wrong way until he called the retrieve office and they couldn't figure out how he flew out in that area so early in the day. We had 4 landouts but all were at airports.