Official Day 9 Summary

When I last wrote, all the pilots were on course for their assigned tasks and as the day progressed it became evident that it was going to be a difficult time. There were some very early landouts and some very blue skies. The Club Class returned home first, followed by the World Class and then finally the Standard Class.

Manfred finished in 26th place in the Club Class and Jonathon had the misfortune to land out quite safely 2km short of the finish line. We had been watching him struggle for altitude here and in the valley close to Cantalice for quite some time. He was able to get to the last turnpoint and make the attempt to get home. His decision to turn back and take an outlanding in the field was a good one. There are high tension lines just before the finish line and he said he was too low to actually see them. And early in the contest a PW5 attempted to finish in much the same manner and crashed into a tree just before the finish. He was extremely fortunate to be unhurt, but he destroyed his glider.

In the World Class Francois and Pat finished the course, with Francois coming in second--missing another first place finish by 19 seconds. Pat's final glide was pretty tense as he announced he was on final glide, but was 500 ft below glide slope. His next call was that he had picked up 350 ft and he was announcing 10km and then a finish.

In Standard Class Mark came in 13th and is in 14th place overall. He had a difficult flight as well. There were some major changes in the standings in the Standard Class. The Italian favorite, Giorgio Galleto, had an extremely difficult day and dropped to 4th overall. There were 18 landouts in the class.

Quite soon after Chip launched I got a distressed phone call from Paul asking if I would call Chip on the radio and ask him if he had the car keys, and if he did, did he want to relight to give them to Paul. I got Chip on the radio and asked him if he had the car keys. Chip replied "Yes I've got them". I then asked him if he wanted to relight to give them to Paul. Very calmly Chip replied back "Why? Does Paul want to go somewhere?"
We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.

More later

Richard