Day Tuesday

Sorry Sports Fans in that I havent kept the blog up todate:-)

Sunday Day one started out looking good and a Task was set for the 24 gliders Matamata, Maramarua, Putararu . The day didnt develop as forecast and a B task was set that was ridge based.

Matamata, Thames, KFC Sheds and home for a tad over 200kms.  It wasnt a standrad "honking" ridge day and in a lot of areas it was ridge induced thermals.  10 pilots got to meet farmers and one plummeted in to Thames Airfield.

Some "external" comments about a Ventus winning the day.

Sports fans should be reminded that this is the first independant Club Class Nationals and the Annual meeting in Wellington last year agreed that any glider may enter. We have K6, PW5 as well as Ventus and ASW27.
ALL will fly without water and be scored together based on the Sailplane racing committee handicaps.

However only "true" club class gliders will be eligble for trophies, prize money etc.   The Club class Day winner gets a bottle of wine and certificate. The highest scoring glider gets a bottle of beer. Of course these prizes may be won by the same pilot!

The non clubclass, effectively hors concors pilots are adding a bit of spice to the competition as it allows some of NZ's top pilots to compete albeit in their own gliders.    It will certainly be interesting as to how they compete in light thermal conditions as they drag their high handicaps around the course.

At the other end of the scale it will be interesting to see how a good pilot in his PW5 utilisises his handicap advantage to keep up with the fleet.

Yetsreday - Monday the forecast was so far out that mid morning Metservice changed dramatically the forecast(max temperature dropped from 28 to 22)  and the day was called off at 1:50pm.

Today(tuesday) again the forecast and what we see out the window dont match. Apparently its supposed to be drizzling here this morning....out the window I see bits of blue thru the cloud, sort of what I would expect on a good Matamata morning.

Time will tell.

For facebook watchers the Matamata Nationals facebook page is being updated more regularly than the blog.

Keep it up