More good racing today. The longest task of the competition was called this morning at over 120 Km. The route tasked gave the competitors a couple of important route choice decisions that proved to be very important in the final outcome.
The first two turnpoints were flown very quickly, with the lead gaggles climbing to 3500 meters and then flying full bar to the next thermal triggerpoint. Between the 2nd and 4th turnpoints the field became more scattered and some pilots gambled on direct routes with varying success.
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| Click for larger graphic |
Results are not up yet, but the Live leaderboard indicates that Ulrich Prinz was first across the line with over 75 pilots in goal.
Josh, Eric and Nick all flew a great race and arrived at goal in good time. Jack, it appears, sat the day out. I hope he's uninjured and the wing is OK. Maybe he'll fly tomorrow.
The event has had it's share of blow-outs and reserve rides, but I'm starting to hear some good things about the new wings. Admittedly, the majority of PWC pilots still seem to vocally advocate the return of comp-class wings, but the new EN-D wings are winning over a few. The fact that you CAN experience a blow-out on bar and still fly away from the event is what we all want - and why I have taken the logic path that I have. Since the era of the wonderfully honest Boom 5, the wings have demonstrated less desirable recovery characteristics - and I refuse to fly a wing that doesn't provide an opportunity to recover from an event using good technique. I'm sure Jack's event yesterday, after many 100's of solid hours on his R10.2-R-11s, hasn't endeared him to the new crop of EN-D wings. . . Me either.
On the other hand, I'm seeing comments like this one, from Andre Rainsford's blog:
Josh is now the only US pilot in the Top-10 but Eric and Nick are 18th and 27th. Here are the cumulative scores with only one task left to fly -"OPINION: I know it's premature to celebrate the stability of this wing, but if this is the future of EN D then we can all give a huge sigh of collective relief and look forward to this new class of EN D wing. I still prefer to fly my R11 in competition, but if the lunacy of FAI/CIVL bureaucratic bumbling continues and the IP6 proves to be as benign as I am thinking it is, then everyone will benefit.I would only hold my breath a little longer while we wait for the SIV junkies to test the stall recovery, but this glider is starting to shape up as superior to old school EN D kit in every aspect worth a mention including safety. For those of you who think I'm full of BS consider that I flew the Peak 2 in similar race conditions a month ago in Porterville with the same willful disdain pushing the speed bar in anger all day whilst hanging onto the B/C lines through the turbulence and I took MANY MORE HITS on that wing."
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| Click for link to full scoresheet |
Tim
Official sites
3D Tracking
Official PWC site
Organiser's website
Paragliding World Cup TV
Pilot list
Live tracking
Taskboards
Live Leaderboard
Retrieve map
Results: Task 1 | Task 2 | Task 3 | Task 4 | Task 5 | Task 6 | Task 7 | Task 8 | Overall
Task Tracklogs: Task 1 | Task 2 | Task 3 | Task 4 | Task 5 | Task 6 | Task 7 | Task 8
Task Animations: Task 1 | Task 2 | Task 3 | Task 4 | Task 5 | Task 6 | Task 7 | Task 8
Twitter (in test): https://twitter.com/#!/ParaglidingWCup
Blogs:
in English: Nicole McLearn | Brett Hazlett | Nicky Moss | Andre Rainsford | Gin Team Blog
in French: Gin Team France | Team ABAC | Elisa Houdry & Ludovic Sivignon | Maxime Bellemin | Charles Cazeau
in German: Swiss Team | German Team | Pepe Malecki
in Russian: Russian Team
in Portuguese: Claudio Virgilio
in Slovenian: SFFA news
in Czech: PGweb.cz/Renata Kuhnova
in Italian: Italian Team
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