Well you have all been very patient. I haven't posted in this blog for a couple of years, but it is fine time for me to get started again. It's great being back on the road flying different sites and competing a little bit. It's always a great learning experience to travel, meet new people, fly new sites, and enjoy some cross country flying with friends.
I decided to attend the Rat Race this year again, as I feel it is one of the best reunion of pilots, infrastructure, and flying conditions that the US has to offer. The conditions seem consistent year after year. Usually we will have at least 5 flying days with it not being to unusual to fly for the full seven days during the comp. Mike and Gail Haley are the meet organizers. They open their house to over 150 pilots, basing the headquarters on their property. The Ruch, Oregon valley has several wineries, a great campground, close to a town center (Medford), with streams and lakes close by for boating and other activities if you are not flying. The cost of the event covers lunches for the full seven days, retrieve, ride to launch, dinner for a couple of nights, some swag and other goodies.
After being here for a couple of days before the comp, I have already had the best flights of the year, with some fun cross country, and great reunion with friends that I haven't seen for a couple of years, and some that have been out of the picture for 6 to 10 years. It's a small community of pilots that compete, so there is a lot of camaraderie amongst the group.
Arriving on Thursday night after a 20 hour drive, it was good to get out of the truck. I had great driving companions with Dan Bruce and Mike Benzie. Dan was the work horse on driving. Since it was his truck, he manned the reins for the full 20 hours. Awesome Dan. We did spend the night in Winnemucca, NV in a nice 1 star hotel scary to get under the covers in the bed, but they did have an awesome shower with hot water. At least the shower was 4 star :-).
Once in Medford we tanked up with food from Safeway, arrived at the campground and proceeded to erect tents and gear. The campground is great. Usually there are about 50 percent of the pilots staying there. It can be quite festive with evening camp fires and chat about the flights of the day. It is well shaded. The big issue in the area is the abundance of poison oak. Shiny three leaf small shrub like plants. Good to carry remedies for the itching and blistering if you're allergic.
We all fell asleep early after the long drive hoping that Friday was going to be a great flying day. Friday did dawn a beautiful day. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, and went to headquarters to check out what was happening. It was nice to see HQ kind of chill before the mass of pilots were to arrive. We did manage to get Mike to use his short bus to drive several of us to launch arriving around 11:30 am. Conditions looked great. It was Benzies first time here, the rest of us had flown here several times. A comprehensive site orientation, no landing zones, favorable landing zones, trigger points for thermals. While at launch there were pilots that had been soaring for an hour already. This site can start working at 10 am. It always seems to be on at Woodrat.
We (us pilots) proceeded to get prepared for the flight. Conditions were looking great and we launched around 1:20 pm. It was an easy climb out from launch, 3750 msl, and I found myself an easy 3000 feet agl over launch boating around. Soon the other pilots launched and pilots were climbing out nicely. After the climb out from Woodrat I flew west to northwest to Rabies Ridge which is a well known trigger point, I found a nice climb just west of the ridge and was able to climb to 7500 feet msl. Proceeding up Rabies Ridge I encountered quite a lot of sink, but not far from Rabies Peak I found an awesome thermal and climbed to 8000 feet msl. I then decided to fly southeast toward Woodrat and see what the other pilots were up to. On the way back I hit big sink was found myself back around 5200 feet msl, however, once over Rabies Ridge I found the best climb of the day with 1150 fpm lift with a climb to 8570 feet msl. I continued to fly west to Old Blue Mountain with not much sink. Once there I heard my vario make a funny noise and then completely shut off. I thought that was a bit unusual so I turned it back on. It then told me that both battery banks were dead. I remembered then that the batteries had been in the device through the winter and had been used up completely. I was surprised as they were the lithium type batteries. So, no vario and already 1 hour and 40 minutes into the flight I decided to glide to one of the local wineries which is named Longsword. I did have my altimeter watch which worked well to tell me if I was in lift or sink to the way there. It was cool to fly with out sound and joyed the quiet while being up high. Once over Longsword a few spirals and I was on the ground happy with the first real thermal flight of the year.
It's nice to land at the winery. Every pilot that lands there gets a 3 oz glass of wine with the choice of red or white, and super social atmosphere as most of the pilots that flew that day landed there.
A great first day. I plan on blogging daily. I hope you get a chance to follow the blog. Sorry it's taken so long to get this blog back up. I wish you all great flights and blue skies.
Cheers, Greg
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