Last week I flew in the Club Class Nationals Competition at Dunstable, London Gliding Club. The Club Class is a mix of older gliders, Libelles, LS4s, Discuses, ASW20s, and others of the era, flown without ballast and with scores handicapped to allow for some semblance of equality. I was flying my DG-300, and we had five contest days out of a possible nine, which is about average.
The weather improved slowly over the course of the week, but the early days were difficult. A lot of low, slow glides under thick cloud or across big gaps with nothing but a gaggle of similarly apprehensive pilots and the urge of competition for motivation. My general approach was to fly slightly more cautiously than usual in a competition, not trying to win days, but trying not to lose them. That’s certainly not a competition-winning strategy, but you do avoid losing big. In the conditions we had, it seemed to work reasonably well.
Day One – A task out toward Northampton, with a particularly difficult leg in and out of that turnpoint. There was no sun on the ground, no cu, and no obvious reason to think we’d get out once we committed. I took a high climb before heading in. Some others went lower and earlier, and a few didn’t make it through. Undercooked the final glide, and spent much of the last leg climbing slowly whilst being blown towards Dunstable.
Day Two – The task included a large blue gap halfway round. Our gaggle tried to find a climb before committing, faffed around for a while without success, and then ended up crossing it anyway. The winners that day just decided to cross the gap immediately… Sometimes you just need to send it.
Day Three – Tough at the start, hard to stay airborne in the start sector. I got going early, thinking the day might deteriorate. It was very slow going through the first turn, but I stayed airborne while some others didn’t. Eventually the conditions improved, and I climbed up again and was first to make it round. A decent day in the end.
Day Four – The first day with good soaring conditions and some proper racing. The first leg was fast, though there were signs of wave interference in places. There was another big blue gap on the final leg, but we found a very good climb over Old Warden that brought us onto glide.
Day Five – We started with a 400 km task, but cut back to 200 as the sky developed. Strong climbs, 4+ knots in places, and for a while I managed to stick with some of the front-runners. But they pushed harder than I was willing to, so I lost contact and flew the rest of the task alone, finishing a few minutes behind.
Overall, I finished 4th out of 21. My best performance in a competition so far, albeit aided by some of the world-class pilots being conveniently elsewhere at the time.
