El Peñón Classic Race 2015: First Competition Task

Rudy flying over goal...

You can read about our day first or, if you are very curious, jump directly to the Results page on this site and come back to this post later!

We ended up with 16 Open Class and 13 Sport Class pilots flying today; not too bad, especially since some of the latter pilots are new to competition and some of the Open pilots are hot shots! It felt like a "VIP HG Comp" more than anything else: only a selected few...

The day started out looking gray, cloudy and cold; however things changed and around noon, it became quite a good looking sky! We chose the "Piano" as our goal for today because most pilots are already familiar with it and thanks to the support of VueloLibreMX, the south end of the field was cleaned up making it longer, therefore, safer!

The task set for the Sport Class first took them out in front to the southwest end of the take off ridge, then back towards the north, past take off and then back to the official "El Piano" LZ. It was an interesting flight for them all and talking to them afterwards, you could see how they had all learned something and were eager thinking about flying again tomorrow! Even a couple of them who landed too early, went up for a second flight; despite it not being valid (past the window closing time), they still attempted to fly the task and had a much better "second round". I was impressed by their spirit!

Five pilots made it to goal and we did the downloads directly at the goal field and towards the end of the day, I realized I had been left with the "locals" who live right next to this landing field, precisely those pilots who had never competed before. I could not resist but to stay a while longer and process the results right there: I wish you could see their faces and share their excitement; what a moment!!!

The Open Class had an 84.9km task with a final leg coming from the west over the take off ridge; their arrival looked really great! It was a good way for these pilots to "spread" their wings since most of them just arrived and are having their first flights after the long winter pause.