HTL Catchup

It's been a while since I've done any blogging here, hope I can still remember how to do this. Below are some pictures and short summaries for the last three HTL contests - hopefully drumming up some enthusiasm for Sunday's 5th Round of the series scheduled for Silverton. See you there.

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HTL #4 BERG
June 7, 2009
By some amazing stroke of luck the big cold front predicted to spoil our Sunday flying was held at bay by some large high pressure system that settled over the interior and we were treated to an absolutely perfect gliding day. Great cloud formations, light winds and very variable and challenging thermals.

BERG support was disappointing with Piet off sick and only Gordon and myself representing the BERG team. I flew my trusty old Sagitta and Gordon flew his Fling.



It was great to see the guys from Boksburg participating despite Alan and Juanita being away at the World Games to fly F3K (in which he placed second - well done Alan. See the MGA Blog for his report).

Also great to see Don Slater visiting us here in Gauteng again and taking part in the competition. SGC, MMS and ETB were all well represented with more than one team each.

The F3B team used the contest as an opportunity to practice the F3B duration task with their Ceres models and did very well against the majority F3J models. Winner in the Open Class was Craig Goodrum with Paul and Chris sharing second place.

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HTL #3 MMS
April 5, 2009
Yes, this was way back when the grass was still green ... just seems so long ago. The MMS HTL was flown at the BERG field and BERG was represented by myself, Piet, Robert, Jochen and Tony.

Weather was cool with hardly any wind early in the early morning working up to a fair breeze by lunchtime. The afternoon rounds had us chasing thermals under the cumulus clouds far downwind.

Results were Michelle first, Craig second and Paul third - with the points very close.

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HTL #2 SGC
March 8, 2009
A last minute venue change from GGGC to the lush SGC field for the second leg of the HTL league and hot, humid and light wind conditions set us up for a really great day of flying.

Thermals were strong but small so in most slots all models would huddle into the same thermal resulting in some close calls. Just unlucky were Craig and Gert when their models touched. Not too much damaged but both models retired from the contest.

BERG posted two teams comprising myself, Piet, Jochen, Peter and Tony.

Paul, Deon and Johan took the first three places.

A really great social day with many pilots staying well after the contest finished to fun fly and socialise.