10 March 2010 The air is buzzing with excitement. Blue skies, no rain, only concern is strength of wind. Looks like we may have to relocate to another take off site other than Mystic because of wind direction as well. Looks like it will be The Pines because of the expected South West wind.Mystic works in a North. Evan Lamberton from New Zealand gave me a refresher on the Flytec 5020 GPS which was very helpful. The day begins.... UPDATE Aw shucks.... So we took off from Rays, near The Pines. Start was a late start at 2pm. I launched too late, high anxiety levels over navigation and loading routes. It is still all so new. I was amazed at how extremely stressed I felt. Was I doing this for fun? Why was I stressing? It was a beautiful day and the view from launch was awesome!
After entering the routes into both instruments I had to take a few minutes to breathe and try bring my stress levels down. I missed the getaway thermal. Bravely tried not to sink out and there were times when I thought I might get back up over ridge height, but it was not to be. I bombed out thinking that was it. I was under the impression that the window closed at 3pm. I would never make it back up the hill in time to refly. But I was here to fly and decided to hike up the hill anyway and try do the task for myself. Turns out that 3pm was for some racing thingy part of the competition and I could fly and score still. I very seldom drink Red Bull as it makes me vibrate/shake, but I downed a Red Bull on launch as I caught my breath and then relaunched. This time the Red Bull helped to steady me and I was grateful for the boost. My relaunch flight was a bit better, but only by a few kilometers. Such is life. I find I am having to reprogram my mind now, or risk being dispirited which might lead to thoughts of quitting this traditional competition saga of mine. This is my training year. Everything I am experienceing is good. It is all learning. UPDATE: These are the detailed provisional results for Task 2 . Tracklogs are still being sorted and I believe there is a Protest by a number of pilots with regard to an understanding of that race detail thingy I had problems with, but for them it was at the end of day - which saw some pilots understand the task as ending at 5.30pm with landing required and so they spiraled down and others understanding it as 6pm and flying until that time. Makes a big difference to the leaders.
| 
