Another Fall Soaring Festival (FSF) has been placed in the books. We had a new format this year for the FSF but it’s not really new to many of us. The open round format (not called flight groups) has been used for 3 years in the CVRC Bent wing event. You have a specified round length in which you need to make your flight. It has a lot of benefits. People see the pilots in the air and decide to launch or not based on how they see others doing at a given time. I find it more of a benefit for the guys who are working winches and flying. They can go fly when there is a lull in the round. They can’t easily do that with a called flight group. Another first for the FSF was to use Glider Score. It seemed to go well.

We flew a 5, 8, 10, 10, 8 on Saturday with a 5, 8, 10, 10 on Sunday. The weather was nice on Saturday with south west winds at the start of the morning transitioning to a western breeze in the afternoon. We started at 8:30AM and ended around 5:30PM. Thermals were a little on the light side until mid-day when they started to become stronger. It was very hazy all weekend due to the Almond and Walnut harvesting taking place. Sunday was totally different with the wind out of the west and much cooler temperatures. Thermals were very light early on and it caught a few people by surprise when they circled and they broke apart. More than one person was seen walking back to the field. As the day progressed that changed to moderate strength lift cycles that were fairly...Continue Reading