Day 4 at Perry and final report

I'm writing this from my home in Columbus, OH after starting from
Perry this morning about 6am. Last night featured a relaxing pizza
and beer dinner with the Tylers and some of us that decided to leave
Sunday morning instead of Saturday afternoon.

Day 4 at Perry dawned with heavy fog over the field, but with some
encouraging but confusing air mass predictions. It was either going
to be real good or real bad, or somewhere in between. We all
assembled and gridded, and the FAI class pilots were all over the map
in terms of ballast loads - nobody had a clue. By grid time the fog
had cleared off and some cumulus-like objects were seen to pop up and
disappear *very* quickly - like a 2-minute cycle time or something.
The ones that lasted more than a couple of minutes were also being
torn up by a fairly significant wind out of the south - ouch!

Amazingly, conditions had improved by 1:30 or so to the point where CD
Ray Galloway elected to launch the first class on the grid, in this
case the 18m guys, and most of them actually stuck (we did have at
least two relights in the first two classes). My class (15m) was at
the very end of the train, and so we weren't launched until almost 3pm
(with a predicted end of the day at 5pm - eeeks!). Std/15m had a 2hr
TAT east to Dry Swamp with a 5m radius, south to Allenday with a 20m
radius, north to Ernies with a 10m radius, and then home. 18m had a
2hr TAT east to Orangeburg with a 10m radius, South to Barnwell with a
10m radius, northwest to Aiken with a 10m radius, and back home.
Sports had a 2hr MAT with Williston (15m south) as the only mandatory
turnpoint.

With such a late launch, there wasn't much in the way of start
roulette today. Everyone basically started as soon as they could get
altitude; no one wanted to be caught out on course when the day died.
In 15m I started out the south side of the cylinder and didn't find
anything I could circle in until all the way into the first circle.
By then I had dumped all my water and was wondering if I could make it
to the Dry Swamp airport to land. As I am circling at 1000'agl in
0.5kt getting farther and farther from the airport, I see XC (Sean
Murphy) circling below me but another mile or so closer to the
airport. Amazingly, Sean sees me circling and flies downwind *away
from the airport* to my thermal. Fortunately we manage to make the
thermal work, at least enough so we can go on down course.

Almost everyone struggled, and we had a number of landouts in all
classes, but somehow the fast guys managed to decode the weather.
There was some streeting, and if you could figure it out (I couldn't)
then you could do well. In 15m BB (John Cochrane) showed us how U.S.
Team members do it with a 65mph run, 5mph faster than 2nd place 5E
(Erik Nelson). In 18m class the scores were closer, but maybe that's
because there were more U.S. Team members in that class ;-). In
Standard class, 7K (Mark Keene) won the day with almost 60mph,
followed closely by XM (Mike Smith) and TS1 (Tony Smolder). LBL (Baud
Litt) who was in 2nd place overall after Day 3 went all or nothing and
paid the price, landing out and dropping to 5th overall. In Sports,
RK (Sarah Kelly-Arnold) won the day again, protecting her 1st overall
position by following 2nd overall RF (Robin Clark) around. Robin said
later that in trying to get away from Sarah, he almost landed them
both out!

Of the 4 contest days at Perry this year, not one of them was a 'full
ballast slam-dunk day'. Every day presented us with a new and
different weather puzzle to solve, and the champions in each class
showed the rest of us how it is done; they solved the puzzles each day
and made it work consistently in very difficult conditions. BB (John
Cochran) took the 15m title, 7K (Mark Keene) took Standard, RK (Sarah
Kelly-Arnold) took Sports (winning every day!) and XG (Jerzy
Szemplinski) took 18m (only 27 points ahead of Dick Butler) - WELL
DONE!!!

I can't say enough about the facilities and organization associated
with the Perry contest. Al and Rhonda Tyler have such a beautiful
place and the rest of us are so grateful that they open their home up
to us every year. Not to mention the absolutely first class contest
staff, with top-notch tow pilots from all over the east coast, the
superb line crew, Leo and Pat Buckley staffing the scoring shack and
retrieve desk respectively, and Patty Smith as Rhonda's alter ego at
the CM slot. And Ray Galloway wasn't too shabby as CD either!

As Al and Rhonda said as we were leaving Perry, "Y'all come back next
year!"

TA