Day 1

What a beautiful morning here in Florida. All the pilots participating in the Team Challenge met at 10:00am for introductions and to discuss the format of the competition. After picking teams, Davis Straub gave us an overview of the days forecast. Winds were still predicted to be fairly strong, blowing 10-13, but lift was predicted to be up to 1200 FPM with cloud base around 5K! Wow, looks like we are going to get a booming day right out of the gates..... It was decided that the task for today would be very straight forward, so that the teams could get used to working together and the newbs like me could get a feel for the whole process. There was no declared goal, for the C pilots, just to stay aloft for 1 hour, which seemed very achievable given the forecast. Pilots had the option of going XC if they wanted to or landing back at the field. My team has 5 pilots, 1 A pilot, 1 B pilot and 3 C pilots. One of the other C pilots on my team is John Brantley from Northern Virginia. He is also flying in the Highland Challenge, so I was glad to have him on my team. His girlfriend Amy is here with him and is an H2 with her AT rating, but isn't flying in the event. She has graciously volunteered to retrieve for our team.

Getting ready for the first day of flying.

   The launch window was set for 1:30 and then pushed back to 2:00. Our team was scheduled to be the second team to launch, but we pretty much got snaked in the launch line, so John and I ended up launching last. I think there may have been a little communication issue with the Russian and Spanish teams, oh well. We ended up launching last at around 3:15. I had a nice clean launch and things were pretty straight forward until around 800', after that it got interesting. We flew through some punchy lift and sink cycles like I have yet to experience, that had me pushing out and pulling in hard to keep the tug on the horizon. It was a relief to get waved off at 2500'. Right off tow, I was able to find some broken lift that got me to around 2800' as I drifted back towards the field. Despite the great forecast, lots of pilots were getting flushed. There was lift to be found, but it was broken and sharp. I got spit twice today, that really felt like I was going over the falls, yee haa. Our team captain Steve Larson radioed that it might be a good bet to follow anything I found downwind towards the town of La Belle, as there were some pretty nice clouds in that direction. I was hesitant to get down wind of the field, as I had intended to land back at the park and the wind aloft was blowing pretty good. As I continued to work some broken lift, my drift was such that I had to make a decision to commit to going for it or head back. Well I came here to go XC, so what the heck. I continued to work lift and drift down wind of the park, with my sights set on a nice cloud building about a mile from the park. I got there with around 1600' and found nothing but sink alarm. I continued to scratch to the best of my ability, but every time I would claw up a few hundred, I would quickly get hammered back down. I bounced around between 1000' and 1500' for another mile and a half, when I got to a big canal that crosses HWY 80 and quickly found myself in a big sink cycle at 700'. Well I was about to have my first landing XC landing. It wasn't tough to tell where the wind was coming from, based on the wind shadow on the water. I set up a pretty high approach and nice landing parallel to the highway, just inside a field speckled with cows.  The brush was taller than it looked from the air, but I had a pretty nice landing. After carrying my glider a little closer to the road, I got John on the cell, but had to get off the phone, because two Sheriffs pulled up with their lights and sirens on.....

Nice of the local Sheriffs to stop by and check on me, lights and sirens were a nice touch.

The first question I got was "Are you OK?" The second question I got was "What are you doing here?" After I explained that I had great intentions of flying further towards the town of La Belle, one of the officers said, "Isn't the hang gliding place just down the road?" "Yes it is" I replied. "Don't they have a place to land down there?" he says.... OK, now I have a cop cracking on my pitifully short maiden XC flight. After assuring them that I was OK and would not damage the fence as I left, they were off. A few minutes later an elderly lady who had to be 85 came screaming to a stop off side the road. After wrestling with here seat belt for what seemed like five minutes, she made her way around the car asking if I was OK and offering the use of her cell phone. I assured he too that I was OK and that I had a driver on the way.

Thanks to Amy for coming to get me and helping to extract my gear from the lumpy cow field. Well, Day 1 is in the books and I can now say that I have logged my first XC flight, a whopping 2.5 miles and 22.5 minutes. Lots of fun today with some great new friends. With the forecast improving over the next few days, it should be a great week of flying adventures ahead.

The site of my first XC landing.