Wrap up

Well what a fortnight. 12 days, over 50 hours flying and  4,400kms flown at between 111kph and 134kph. The weather was fabulous with cloudbases regularly over 10,000' and strong climbs. The food was excellent, the people friendly and the organisation of the comp itself was very good thanks to the Competition Director, Franca.


Alberto Pozzi, Luca's shoe-in and the lucky Brit




Flewett with flatulence and Dane frankly bored

 The drive is horrendous: 1200 miles each way taking three days in total. But it is well worth it. There can't be many places better suited to racing gliders. The tasks get very samey - but each day there's a new twist to the conditions and it really does become about finding better and better ways to shave time off. Once again it was a privilege to be flying with some great mates and excellent pilots. Roll on next year!

Day 8

Fine wing running from Katy G

Praise the Lord it was back to racing tasks today. Not a straightforward one though - lots of new places to visit and more ridges to work out on the 385km 4 point crochetting course. The pre-start gaggles were soemwhat intimidating today with plenty of multi-core thermalling and climbs up the side of lower cloudbase with plenty of gliders going in and out of cloud at 8500'. All very exciting.

We started at 2pm and had a patchy run South with a low save on the ridge just past the windmills that put us nicely back up to get into the first turn. The next leg was into new territory but the West facing ridges played ball and progress was made even if it was slow. The penultimate leg was into wind so had some good streets but was perilously close to airspace. I seemed to make time up on the last leg by finding a good core and then pushing onto the ridge East of Terni to pull up along that and scrape onto glide. 111kph was 4 kph slower than my Nemesis, Luca and my lead has shrunk to a mere 30 points - so it all comes down to the last day!

GA comes home 5th for the day at 133kph

Geoff looking pleased (you should see him looking miserable)

Geoff had a great run round and was 5th for the day. Ben remains top of the pile in Standard class with a 100 point advantage on Dane.

Day 9

Here we go again!

Day 9: 418kms and back on the milk run on the East of Italy. It was a day for local knowledge and the brave and those who went fast ran the ridges at low level then picked up the convergence at the second TP and ran that all the way North. Luca did that at 133kph whilst I took too many therms to stay higher and did 122kph. That meant second place overall for the comp but not such a bad result for the first time here.

Ben won the Standards with some consistently good flying, beating Dane into second place. All in all a good result for the Empire team!

Day 7

FFS - another AAT.

This one was 2.5 hours in length as the forecast was again for thunderstorms later in the afternoon (and sure enough they did show up). I found it hard to string climbs together and it was much more of a glide and climb day but with some strong climbs every so often. A silly low point of 3450' amsl in the hills East of Foligno had the pulse increasin as landout options weren't great but I climbed away in 4.5kts to carry on and come home at 116kph, 10kph slower than 1st place. Too slow for the day and the lead has shrunk to just 76 points with 2 days remaining - the tension is mounting!

Day 6

Geoff struggles with the AAT planning but later romps home third for the day

Yet another lahvely AAT. The forecast was for the weather to deteriorate quite fast during the afternoon and the task time was reduced on grid from 3 to 2.5hours as a result. I got to 10,000' just before the gate opened and trickled back the 10kms to the start line to make an early start and headed off South. A good climb at Celano put me back up and it was onwards into the first sector for 20kms or so and then turn to head North. The climbs on the way North weren't quite as easy to find and I got down to 5500' amsl near Vittore which was quite low enough thank you, but then ran into a solid 8kts which put me onto a 105kms final glide into the 2nd and 3rd sector and a pull up or two along a ridge line on the final 30kms. Home at 126kph put me third for the day but only losing 11pts on the day winner, Luca De Marchi.

Hmmm - best not to catch fire then...

Monday is a rest day so we only have three flying days left :-(

Your Italian correspondent goes flying - what a looker.

Day 5

Master tasksetter and all round superstar, Giorgio Galetto



Back to racing tasks again today with a 361kms task to Pescarasolla and North to Nocera Umbra. The day felt like it should have yielded some really fast speeds but very few people seemed to string it all together. The Empire team certainly seemed to struggle down near the first turn with a few low points on the ridges before we could get high enough to nip in and out of the turn. Going North was much better with a couple of very strong therms of 8kt average, with one peaking at 13.5kts on the vario average. Getting round the last two TP’s was surprisingly OK and I finished with a speed of 124kph. The LX9000 logger is doing funny things with the SD card download so it was a good job the Colibri 2 backup is working well. Man I would have been annoyed if I'd not scored for the day!

On tow for another fine day of racing

Day 4



Possibly Dane Dickinson, but more likely some chav tourist who's misplaced Magaluf



Day 4 was another AAT on the familiar format of hack down South then push back North of site and charge home. The added excitement today was avoiding a large chunk of airspace sat in the second sector which made the in-flight planning even more complex. As it was the run South was excellent albeit interspersed with the occasional light shower that smacked on the canopy with big fat raindrops.




Down at Settefrati - the view West (ugh)... and the view East (nice).

 

 Coming North the line of lift was strong up just beyond Rieti and then it was into bluer conditions for the last two sectors. Time to change gear then, and still I managed to run over time unnecessarily by going too deep into the final sector for a flight of 410kms-ish. The final glide back over Terni was enhanced by the view of two impressive waterfalls tumbling out of the Rieti plateau. Better yet we were back at a decent hour which meant more pool time. Sadly for Owen that included a view of him derigging in the field he landed in at the bottom of the hill the hotel sits on...



The view from the hotel pool area...