Memphis Soaring Society

Practice Days
This year, July 4 and 5 fell on Friday and Saturday. That made Thursday the official practice day. However, Wednesday was a regular flying day, so for some people there were two practice days. They both turned out to be good cross country days. For me, Wednesday produced a flight of 101 nm in 4.3 hrs, and Thursday yielded a 154 nm flight in 5.5 hrs. Some of the flying on Thursday was with Cahoon and Smalley who also had good cross country flights.

Day 1

#1 - Dave Cahoon

Conditions on day 1 looked good except for the low cloud bases and a mild S wind. The task was CS to HEE (Helena) and back to LF for 111 sm. Six of 12 gliders made it all the way. First back was McNamara (ASW-27) who blistered the course with a raw speed of 50.43 mph. I (Standard Cirrus) was second to land with a raw speed of 36.18 mph. Jadnacz (ASW-24) was next at 39.66 mph. He was followed by Cahoon (ASW-28) at 39.44 mph, King (PIK-20D) at 33.58 mph, and finally Moore (L-23) at 23.31 mph. The table below shows standings for the day together with the handicaps, handicapped speeds and distances. Despite an abundance of nice looking cu's, lift right up to cloud base was "broomstick" narrow, to quote Ed King. It's amazing that the Moores were able to complete the task their heavy, two place ship.

Day2

#2 - Scott Jednacz

Conditions on day 2 were much worse, with very low cloud bases. Ed Carney had to scud run out of Memphis to get to CV. So, Bob Moore (CD) set a short task of LF, a strip 2 miles West of Harrisburg, a strip 5 miles West of Cherry Valley and back to LF for 32 sm. People were landing before the fourth ship launched. After releasing, it took me three tries under nice louds to get back to release altitude. That was an omen. It was one of those days when 3000' msl was cause for celebration. I was first to start, followed by Hyde (LS-3) and McNamara. Getting to Harrisburg was not too hard, and making it West to the turn point wasn't a problem either. Hyde got there before me and headed back to Harrisburg where I reported some lift. For me, getting back to the ridge, where the lift was, was a chore. In the process I heard McNamara announce that he was landing at the 1st turnpoint. I was looking at a dirt field West of Highway 1 when I snagged one of those broomstick thermals and hung on for dear life to 3000'. Meanwhile, Hyde landed in a dirt field South of Harrisburg. Still later, Corlew landed at the 1st turnpoint too. Coming back down the West side of Highway 1, I had LF made, but the way to turnpoint 2 looked pretty good. Cahoon would say it was those ricefield cu's that tease by looking good and producing nothing. He would have been right. I got to the 2nd turnpoint about 1000' below my glide path for LF with a 1000' margin. After turning toward LF I wasn't getting anything and decided to go back to the 2nd turnpoint and land. Meanwhile, Cahoon anounced a restart and he managed the entire course when conditions were a little better. He was the only one to complete the task that day. See the standings for the day below and the cumulative results for the contest.

Final Comments

#3 - Tim McNamara

Our congratulations go to the winners and our thanks go to those who put a lot of work into making this year's Fun Fly a success; to Bob and Charlene for running the show, to Jean Newcomb, Nora Fernandez and Diane Cadieux for running the start and finish gates, to those who towed, and to those who ran the line. I apologize for delays in scoring the contest. If I had run the 2003 version of Winscore throrughly before the contest I would have discovered that the new version dropped the ability to input flight data manually. (SSA now requires data logers at all sanctioned contests.) Who'd a thunk? And with only one finisher the second day, simplified manual scoring based on speed would not work, except to declare the 1st place winner. So, Cahoon was awarded 1st place on the spot and the others had to wait for me to go home, gather additional information and come up with an SSA like scoring system that is suitable for our Fun Fly contests. That only took three days work. Now we have a suitable scoring system in an Excel spreadsheet for use in future years.