An Odd Day

I woke this morning feeling a bit out of sorts. I couldn’t quite figure out why. Part of it was certainly the mild earache that signaled the onset of a head cold, and part of it was certainly the mental fatigue from this week of high intensity flying activity. I am finding competition flying particularly stressful, since there is so much going on, and so much of it is out of my control. Being new to competition, every aspect of it seems to demand my full attention, and eventually I just overload. At that point the whole scene just sort of washes over me and I feel a little bit numb just waiting to be told when and where to go and what to do.

At headquarters I checked the scores to see what my position in the staging line would be: 69. The first time this week I had an odd number – appropriate, since I was feeling a bit odd! Everyone seemed to like the earlier launch window, and yesterday was certainly a good test of it since it was not a day people would have typically launched early. “See Davis, it wasn’t so bad”. I just had to throw out that small jab, since Davis was the one who had harassed me the most for suggesting it. He kept saying that I needed to quit blaming the organizers for my problems, and that I had a full ten minutes that I could have launched when no one wanted to on the windy day two days ago. I have no idea why he even cared, since it didn’t affect him at all, but I get the feeling he just likes to make things difficult whenever he can, and he thrives on controversy – real or manufactured.

Things were a bit disorganized out at the field, since the task committee was still debating the task, and the launch crew was trying to determine the best launch setup. It looked like a light and variable day with a slight east to northeast bias. It would probably be blue again today with top of the climbs only reaching around 4500ft earlier and 7000ft later. It seemed like a good day for a moderate sized triangle, but apparently Attilla was still holding out for a long task: 306km downwind to Hay! Jonny Durand seemed to favor a smaller triangle, and Gerolf was on the fence. The crew finally decided to set up launch mid field facing east, with the staging lines running north-south. It was a good choice, as it gave the most flexibility in case the wind picked up or changed direction. It turned out that the wind stayed light and variable, making for some interesting landings by those who bombed out!

We were barely set up and not yet in the staging line when the horn sounded for the task briefing. The task was 176km out and back, with both legs more or less cross wind. It seemed a pretty reasonable task for the day. I entered the route in my flight computer, and suddenly the screen went dark, as if somehow the contrast setting had changed. The same thing happened yesterday, and I was able to go into the menu and lower the contrast to make it readable, and then after a short while it came back and I reset the contrast to the original value and everything seemed fine. I tried the same thing again today, but then the screen went completely black, and I couldn’t see a thing. I turned it off hoping it would fix itself like it did yesterday. I went back to suiting up to fly. I tried to do a radio check with my driver and found that my push to talk switch which had worked flawlessly for 3 years was on the blink. Crap. I turned the vario back on – still black. About this time Davis came down the line yelling my name. “Why aren’t you launching? The launch window is open. You wanted an early launch, get out there!” “Don’t you have something better to do, Davis”, I replied. I can’t remember what he said then, but my reply was “Davis, I think I speak for most everyone here when I say f**k off.” Well, that pleased him no end since what he loves most is to get a rise out of people. By this time I had had enough. I took off my gear and called my driver on the radio and told her I was going to break my glider down and not fly. I certainly could have flown, since I had my back-up GPS for navigation, my flight computer audio vario was still working, and the radio is only marginally useful in the air anyway. I just hate conflict, though, and I hate being baited into it. Coupled with everything else that was going on I just wasn’t having fun, and it was time to back off. Hopefully Davis achieved some feeling of manhood by working his way down to the 69^th position in the competition to psyche someone out of flying!

Back at the Vandenburg I got out my radio spares and did some testing. Sure enough, the push-to-talk was bad. I clicked in a new one and everything was working. I cut off the old connector and crimped on a new one and the original switch worked now as well. It was a good test of the easy swap out and repair feature of the system; from now on I will carry the spares in my harness. Next I tackled the flight computer. I switched it on and of course it worked fine. I tried entering courses and doing various things to get it to malfunction again, but to no avail. Perhaps it was sitting in the sun that it didn’t like. Tomorrow I will try and keep it in the shade. I tried to e-mail Steve Kroop at Flytec for some suggestions, but the wireless network was down. Oh well, just not my day, I guess. I headed of to the Chemist to get some Sudafed for my cold, the grocery store for some ice cream, and back to the caravan park for a nap. Tomorrow is another day.