Can we final glide from here?

Wednesday started shaping up to be a decent gliding day. There was a bit of high cloud that was slowing thermal production but the forecast was good. After some briefings we went out and hit the grid.

Today I wanted to fly in a twin to get some pointers on my flying and decision making so I chose to ride with John Bayliss from the Auckland club in their Duo Discus. After sitting on the grid in a blue sky with other glidings struggling we got our chance to go. The tow pilot turned around and towed us right into some fresh development which took us to 3500' and we were off. A quick snap through the start gate and we were heading up north.

As we were flying north I had the tendency to try to turn into every little blip of lift that I hit. Supposedly this is a bad idea in competition flying since the goal is to get as far as possible without turning. Each turn that you make is time lost on the task. It does take a bit of wits to leave a perfectly good thermal behind.

After very little work we were up over the swamp and through our first turnpoint. To my surprise he suggested that we head over to the ridge even though there was little to no wind. What we found on the ridge was interesting. When we flew over the little valleys on the ridge we would get big lift. Supposedly this is from all of the thermals on the ground getting funneled up the valleys.

We flew the ridge all the way down to the golf ball with very little turning. The GPS in the glider told us that we were through our last turnpoint although I think that it was improperly configured so we were a bit out.

From there I could see the field and asked "Can we final glide from here?". I could hear a little laugh from the back. I kicked it up to 100 knots and pointed it at the field. We got back to the field at 2000 feet so from the golf ball to the field we lost about 800 feet at 100 knots. Not bad.

Full airbrake and sideslip to get down and we were back on the strip. 2.5hours and a great flight.

I learned that even though the wind isn't on the ridge that it can be working through ridge assisted thermals. Oh yeah, and that the PW-5 performance is scary bad compared to modern gliders.