After so many outlandings yesterday, the music for the weatherman (Uwe) sounded a bit like a funeral march. They displayed a picture of him sitting in a glider with a serious, focused expression on his face on the overhead screen. I think he was quite embarrassed by the attention.
He started the briefing with a picture of a frog with a gun to its head. There was much laughter. I wasn't quick enough to get a picture.
I finally get the frog joke. Weathermen here are known as Weathermen or Frogmen.
Today is another Assigned Area Task with a min distance of 255 km.
I had a good look at the Hornet-Libelle flying Club Class today on the grid. There are only 3 of them (although I'm not clear as to whether that's in existence now or ever built). It's a glider with Libelle wings and an early Hornet fuselage (although the canopy is quite different being side hinging and forward hinging, ie open it to the side then move it back and forward -- unusual).
We were worried today that we might have a repeat of yesterday since there were clouds quite early in the morning and that is usually a sign that the day will over develop and there might be thunderstorms. It did indeed overdevelop out around yesterdays task, but today the task was in conditions that remained good for the whole flight.
We've had some problems with "Radio Australia" (the local nickname for our team frequency). The Icom handheld does not have as powerful a transmitter/receiver as a purposebuilt base radio. We do have an external antenna mounted on a magnetic base, but there are so many cars and caravans around that we need it to be high. We've been putting it on top of Helge's awning from the mobile home with the BBQ lid as a groundplane. It usually works ok but next year a proper radio will be important.
The girls flew little more than the minimum distance and were back in good time with speeds of 93kph (IGC traces: Lisa Trotter, Lisa Turner). In checking the scores, however, they were a little off the pace since the winning gliders were well over 100kph. A dry Libelle recorded 102 kph. We still have much to learn.