2012 Rally
We’re doing it once again in 2012. We had a fantastic time last year flying 6 out of 7 days, with 5 fantastic tasks. Although we haven’t decided for sure, we may want to start even further north to get a jump start on new territory. We’re thinking of Live Oak, which was our airfield on day 2 of the 2011 Rally. It’s just a short drive from Quest Air.
The folks at Lookout Mountain are crossing their fingers we can make our way there. Dustin’s dad is also standing by in case we find ourselves headed toward Huntsville. Of course, all the friendly people in Americus, Moeltry and Vidalia are begging us to come back through again too. So like always, we have heaps of options.
We’re bumping the dates back to the old standby, end of April. We’ll run from April 22nd to April 28th and just like every year, Bobby Bailey, Rhett Radford and the Quest and Florida Ridge tug pilots will fly Dragonflies and the competition crew will drive all towing supplies to each location. We already have plenty of drivers ready to team up for retrieve, so we should be able to get everyone squared away. David Glover has set up a Facebook page called US Hang Gliding Competitions Community. This is the best place to connect with other pilots for retrieve, airport pickups, glider transport and any other logistical things that you need to work out in advance. But, if you don’t have any luck solving issues there, feel free to contact me and I’ll see what I can do.
So join us April 22nd to April 28 for another week of some of the best flying the southeast has to offer!
Registration Opens December 14th at Noon EST
Please don’t try to register before noon on the 14th. The form won’t function properly and you’ll just annoy me and end up at the bottom of the list instead of the top.
The registration form will magically appear right here on the site – at the top, as the most recent post – when the time comes.
Winners
Jonny Durand 1st – Moyes Litespeed
Paris Williams 2nd – Aeros Combat
Carl Wallbank 3rd – Moyes Litespeed
Final Day
We knew the forecast wasn’t looking good for the final day today, but we tried to hold out hope. We woke up this morning to clear skies, but high wind. Severe weather was supposed to be coming, but aside from the wind, the sky was looking fairly nice. By about 10am we realized it wasn’t going to happen though and called the day and set the prize giving for noon so that everyone could hit the road and start the long drive home.
As usual Jonny came out in first. Paris in one of his first meets in quite a few years was back in form quickly and came in second, just 28 points ahead of Carl in third place. The prize giving was short, but fun. David announced that $4500 was going to the third place pilot, with the remaining $500 to be split between first and second 
We can only hope for such good conditions next year. As we drove Kraig to the airport in Atlanta, we watched the supercells developing and dumping heavy rain. I guess we made the right call, but it was sad that such a great week of flying had to come to an end.
Days 5 and 6
Well, with all the flying we’ve been doing, I’ve done a terrible job of keeping up the blog. Obviously, we had two more days of fantastic flying and the Rally ended today under bad weather.
We ended up staying an extra day in Americus, Georgia after Julia’s accident. The airport put on a special BBQ lunch just for us and the weather was perfect there for another task, but this time the goal was to the east as weather was closing in on us to the west. Unfortunately, all of our hopes of reaching Lookout Mountain were fading. But, we had so many really nice options to the east where conditions were looking more promising. Vidalia Georgia, home of the sweet vidalia onion was the goal with a turnpoint at Cochran a little to the north for a total distance of 194km. Turns out it was the perfect task…tons of pilots made goal and everyone was happy, especially the town of Vidalia. Like many of the other spots in Georgia, they were amazingly welcoming. They even brought out Yumoin, the sweet vidalia onion 
After a great party at a cool local restaurant called the Treehouse (which was actually a bit of a treehouse on the swamp) with loads of friendly southern bells for the boys, we prepared to head out of Vidalia on Day 6. We were within reach of the beach at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but the sea breeze and miles of swampy mangrove covered areas before the coastline would have made for a very iffy task. So instead we called a 136km task to Allendale, South Carolina, across the Georgia stateline into our third state.
It was a difficult task and only about a dozen or so made it in. There was quite a upset in the scores when Dustin landed about 25km short of goal and Paris (with a broken VG) only made it in an hour after the lead gaggle. Worse yet, Curt Warren hit a “wire slapper” as he called it that broke his instrument pod mount and sent his 6030 plummeting. Without a track log, he could only get distance points for making goal. With a track log, he would have been in second place 
Day 4
Bummer of a day yesterday. Julia from Russia came off the cart early and smashed in. She was taken by medivac to the hospital in Albany, about 45 minutes away. We were all so grateful that they found no broken bones or serious injuries. She’s just pretty beat up and sore. Everyone is wishing her a super quick recovery. Unfortunately, her glider has quite a lot of damage.
Special thanks to Jeff Shapiro and Jack Simmons who are medical professionals and looked after Julia while we waited for the ambulance.
Julia was about number 6 in the launch line and of course, we had to shut everything down pending her evacuation. By the time the helicopter was gone, it was nearly about 3:30pm. The task committee reset the times on the task as conditions were beautiful and we expected it was soarable until well into the evening. However, because of the chaos in the launch line (gliders moved all around for the helicopter and such), it seemed there was no fair way to get everyone lined up and launched in time for the task, so we cancelled the day. Looking back, we (meaning me) should have been preparing people to continue with the task. Had everyone been lined up and ready, we could have done it – most pilots still wanted to fly. Several guys went for a freeflight and said conditions were fantastic and cloud base was near 7500 ft.
According to many reports, today’s forecast looks “epic” (in the words of Shapiro . We are briefing at 10am to be ready for a really long task. Unfortunately, it is now looking like Lookout Mountain isn’t within our reach as Friday and Saturday weather that direction is taking a turn for the worst . But, we’re still holding out hope and we’ll know more with this morning’s forecast.
Day 4
The wind predicted for early today hasn’t materialized. In fact, it looks like we will have very little wind. The task is to Eufaula, Alabama, 91 km to the west southwest….state number 3! Because there are military operations there most weekdays, we cannot tow out of there tomorrow, so we will drive another hour on to Tuskegee, home of the famous Tuskegee Airmen.
Americus is a lovely, gigantic field with even more friendly southern folks. We’ve pretty much taken over the FBO and they don’t seem to mind one bit. The field is so huge, we can basically tow any direction we want from anywhere on the field.
Half Full
We’ve made it more than halfway to our goal at Lookout Mountain so far and it doesn’t look like there anything that will stop us from getting there this year! The forecast is calling for west wind today, which will keep us from going the direction we need to go. But, since we’re a day ahead of schedule, we can either fly a task locally, or fly straight north to Tomaston and then drive west to Tuskegee for tomorrow. Thursday would then be Tuskegee to Gadsden and then Friday we would make our way to Lookout Mountain. That just leaves a local task at Lookout for the final day. What could be more perfect?!
