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BPCup Long Mynd round report
Posted by Dave Thomas at 2010-07-13 23:24

The BPCup were at Wentnor, Friday through to Monday of last weekend, but only had weather for one day of flying, on the Sunday at the Mynd. This year our own pilots were largely missing from the BPCup, but Malcolm Davies and Dave Thomas held up the club banners by coming in 3rd and 4th on a difficult and highly scoring task of an elapsed time to a goal at the Severn bridge at Stourport on Severn. 8 pilots made goal and 34 out of 40 competitors went XC.

For those unfamiliar with competition terminology - an elapsed time task means that the task is set with a an earliest launch time, but the window to actually leave the start cylinder is set slightly after that time, and then you can leave the start cylinder anytime you fancy after that - but from then on it is your own personal race to goal, and the person who spends the shortest time going from the exit of the start cylinder to the end of the speed section wins (as long as they then carry on to fly to the outside of the goal cylinder). Sounds complicated but not that bad really. The start cylinder was 1km circle around launch, and your own clock starts ticking the last time you leave that circle. The goal had two circles around it - the end of speed section was set at 4km - so when you get within 4Km of stourport on severn bridge, your clock stops ticking. The actual goal was a large 3km circle around the bridge - large to allow pilots to find a suitable landing field in a largely build up urban area.

The wind was on the strong and gusty side in the morning, but forecast to drop dramatically and reduce in thermic strength. We all sat on launch with no task set, whilst the free flying pilots all took off and flew around quite happily, some going XC, whilst others pushed forward at will, showing it to be not that windy. I grew increasingly impatient and could see a good XC day slipping away before my eyes after a few days of frustration. Eventually a load of high cloud started to kill the clouds and things calmed down, and at 14:10 we were briefed with a launch window open at 14:20 - not much time to prepare the GPS etc. Earliest time to leave the start cylinder was 14:45 with a land by time of 19:45 which is really late, but gave lots of time for the indecisive to fly.

I prepared asap and got into the air to be greated by my own thermal which others rejected, and 7 minutes later I was at 3500ft ASL but beyond the start cylinder. Damn, I was still a few minutes early so I had to fly back towards the ridge - which is something you are allowed to do in elapsed time comps. Luckily back at the ridge and still high - not much wind drift so it was easy to go forward, I then got up again and this time was the first to leave the hill at 14:48 (I got maximum lead out points for this).

I was fairly quickly joined by quicker pilots who caught me up, and then half a dozen of us spent over an hour in the weakest of cumulus less thermal, drifting slowly to Brown Clee. I was bottom of the stack most of the time, but held on patiently refusing to give up. Behind Clee Hill the gaggle broke up and I went on a glide to my only option - a trigger I've used before called Knowle Hill (look it up on the map - you might need it one day). As I approached on a long glide two things happened which was my lucky strike of the day - the sun came out from behind the cirrus, and I saw a buzzard take off from the trees on the hill and circle. Speed bar on and I arrived over him with a couple of hundred feet to spare. Up I went slowly and I decided there and then that it was going to take me to goal - even though I had 20Km to go. It didn't actually get me high enough to glide to goal, but I got some more unexpected lift over the Wyre forest. I then saw two other gliders who I'd been watching a few miles south of me start a glide towards goal. So I set off, eventually on full speedbar, but I was still second across the invisible 4km goal line by a minute - very exciting being part of this race, except Richard Butterworth hadn't actually seen me racing him. I had too much height which cost me precious minutes and lost me the potential of 3rd or even a 2nd place - but thats a learning experience and trusting in your glide calculator.

The three pilots above me (903 points)in the final results, Tony Spirling (975 points), Richard Butterworth (933 points) and Malcolm Davies (914 points) had all left the start cylinder a few minutes behind me in a later thermal, caught me up before we flew together, and that made all the diference. What was so amazing about the flight and everyone agreed with this was that the conditions looked so weak and lifeless that no one could imagine so many people (free flyers and in the BPCup) actually flying such good distances or in fact any distance at all. It shows that patience really can be a virtue - don't leave lift of any kind unless you can see something definitely better.
Dave Thomas

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