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Advanced pilots flew their Known in the morning as early morning fog burned off, following yesterday's pattern, by 9:30am. Intermediate flew their Known after lunch with the strongest winds and scattered fair weather clouds at about 4700 AGL. The Unlimited pilots started their flights at 3:30pm and finished at 7pm. To the relief of all, our CD has replaced the world contest style warm-up maneuver for Unlimited with the usual IAC base leg safety check. Judges agreed that the Unlimited Free flights were far superior to the flights for the Known. Flying for the free was especially crisp and precise, with the large majority of pilots flying at world level. There were few major mistakes. One pilot flow a negative one and one half turn spin followed by opposite one and one half turn roll both the same direction. This seems like a hard mistake to make until you place yourself in the pilots seat and think about it. We had three free programs that started downwind. Two of the pilots wisely flew slowly across the box to advertise their presence to the judges before climbing-out to set-up their downwind entry. A third pilot puzzled the judges by flying the entire sequence backward. The only plausible explanation offered was that the pilot may have been flying a borrowed free, and hadn't noted carefully the direction of entry. To add to the injury, the figures were flown very well. It would have been a high scoring flight. Intermediate had to contend with the strongest winds of the day. Winds continued from the southeast. Judges were on the east side of the field in the morning. Advanced flew with an off-judge wind. Judges were on the west side in the afternoon, yielding an on-judge wind for Intermediate. Many Intermediate pilots struggled to prevent their sequence from flying outside the east boundary of the box, or even behind the judges. |
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