Canungra Cup task 3

Task 3 didn't look good from the beginning. We were meant to launch from Hinchies. The sky was overcasted with almost no sunny patches at all. Grey cloud cover and strong wind gusts were a bit worrying and there were a couple of moments when task committee was close to cancel the task. I took off late when I decided that there is no hope for more sun.

Surpassingly the clouds were working and we were able to climb. Unfortunately I was too focused on trying to break through the inversion and I missed the leaving gaggle. For the next 30 min I was trying to catch up with them but they were much further and higher. After the plateau behind the hinchies there was a deep valley and another ridge line. Because of the strong wind soaring this ridge was quite challenging - the whole hill was on the lee side of the plateau. Very turbulent air, couple of collapses and wing literally dancing above the head made me try even harder to get out of there.

When I was about 100m above the ridge line I decided to go downwind. In this way with gliding ratio at about 20 I avoided another lee and went for a glide to look for the thermal. I was alone. Somewhere over the flats I found thermal and managed to gain more altitude. This was the last climb of this flight and I landed safely in the Beaudesert. Interesting 16km flight.

A couple of pilots made it to the goal (41km). Respect.

Wind dummy:
    

Site briefing:

Ready to fly!

The gaggle:

Getting ready to launch:

Here we go:

In the air:

And waiting for the retrieve: