End of day 1

The weather for the first day of the cross country course wasn't the flashest but it did allow us the luxury of spending most of the day in the classroom cramming our brains full of outlanding techniques. We talked about the order of decision making as your height decreases. Things change as you get lower and learning the changes will help us along the way.

Later in the day they decided that we would do cross strip landings with a 25 knot NE wind. There was no shortage of stress in the room. We towed the gliders out onto the grid and proceeded to take turns in the twins. They set us up to cross strip with about 200m of landing distance.

I was in the backseat of TT (Trev Terry's Duo Discus) which added a whole different variable to the equation. The wind was a direct 25 knot cross strip and even with full opposite aileron the downwind wing was perfectly happy where it was on the ground. After a little more coaxing it decided to give up and we were flying. The Duo Discus planes are amazingly easy to fly. The controls are light and it doesn't seem very twitchy with speed control.

We got set up on downwind relatively close in because of the wind. Turning onto base we had about a 45 degree crab to keep us from heading to Hamilton. Ok, everything looking good. Turn onto finals, airbrakes open half, flair, touchdown, stop. Wooooo!

New plane, sitting in the back, 25 knot wind, acceptable landing. That is a good start.

At the end of the day we had a briefing on how to use SeeYou to analyze our flights and we went through some actual competition flights to compare techniques between different pilots. We also had an introduction to competition flying and how the whole process works.

I am sitting out on the porch looking over the airfield and the sun just came out. It is threatening to clear up and allow us to start flying. Well, off to wipe down the gliders and get read for another day.