Day 1 Begins

3:30pm..After some last minute wranglings we have launched 36 gliders. GUN unfortunately had a severe groundloop and lost a tailskid and is being worked on as I report. The really good news is that we have a 5 strong club class task.

With weather coming in from the Southwest the tasks generally end up heading north.
Open/18 metre class are going west to "The Neck", then North to Arrowsmith returning to OMarama for a 396km Triangle with a maximun start height of 7,000ft.

The Standard/15metre class of 17 gliders is tasked out to the west "Cotters" then North to Arrowsmith and back to Omarama for a triangle of 344kms.

The 5 members of the Club Class are tasked to the west to "Dingle" then Goodyer, then Glen Lyon and back to Omarama for a cats cradle of 189.4kms.

We have 6 SPOT messengers on Contest gliders.
You can track the gliders progress at
http://map.xinqu.net/spot.html

The green circles indicate that we have received a position within the last hour, orange between 1 & 2 hours, red indicates that we have not received a position for over 2 hours. This may be due to the aircraft having landed or the pilot forgetting to push his SPOT button.

The sweepstake in the contest office is for the first finisher at between 6:30-7pm.
GOI reports returning from leg 2 with a canopy problem.


and now we wait......