Carefully I meandered under the most promising ones and to my delight I was able to cruise at high speed with very few turns all the way to their end; I came to a dead end. There the eastern air (cloud bases then 10,300') met the western marine air (cloud bases at least 2,000'lower) and mountain tops were in the clouds. There were some promising clouds on the way to Lost River in Mazama but not so consistent as along the route I came from.So I decided to first backtrack about ten miles and then crossed the Entiat Valley to the Chelan mountains. There about thousand feet above their 7,700' tops I connected to good thermal hoisting me to 9,900'. This was plenty for a long glide crossing Lake Chelan and starting a second leg; I picked out Moses Mountain in the Colville Indian Reservation east of Omak as my second turn. The flight to there involved going through several rain showers and a little scare just east of Okanogan, when the clouds just simply quit behaving the way they did before. I sank to 5,900' but that was the last problem point of the whole day. In eight minutes - after finding a saving thermal - I was back up at 9,400'.For the rest of the flight I stayed above 8,000'. Eventually after rounding Wilbur, from 9,500' at Hartline I started my 31 mile final glide. I kept bumping into good air and lost only 3,400'; I was still at 6,100' over Ephrata. So, to extend my day, I decided to trade that height into more distance, and tacked on Beezley (a 20 mile round trip, still arriving back over the Ephrata airport high, at 2,600'). So much for my "refined" final glides. I landed at 5:20 pm.
Distance achieved according to OLC rules was 443 km; that was good as I could replace one flight among my best six OLC flights one that was shorter, and thus solidify my standings.

Monday June 27
The first day of the contest was scrubbed at 2:30 pm due to steady rain. I eventually drove to Wenatchee, with two goals in mind; one, to get the WIFI CD so that I could re-install the software wiped out during my and fellow pilots' efforts trying to connect to the glider club's network. The second task was to find a replacement mike for my glider. I lucked out when I pulled up at Pangborn finding Arnie who told me that there were two spare ones in the back seat of our towplane; and that besides no towpilot used them anymore. All used their headsets with a mike built-in. We tested the mikes and they both worked; I was happy to borrow one. On to home and that CD. Task accomplished. I ended up spending the next four hours in my office answering business calls and replying to messages that I could not do at the Ephrata airport, since I had no access there to the internet. At five Emily and Karly also left Ephrata for home, and we all spent the night at home. All this time it was raining steadily. I was kicking myself for not having disassembled the glider Sunday when the forecast said 50% chance of precip for Monday. Poor CD glider was dowsed.

Tuesday June 28.
I drove to Ephrata early, the morning sky was not suggesting much improvement. By the time I reached Quincy, I called Emily and Karly and told them to hold off coming to Ephrata. Eventually, at 10:15 after the pilots' meeting where we were told that we will fly even if the weather would be marginal, I summoned them to Ephrata.
In the meantime I stripped the wing sleeves of the wings and wrung out buckets of water from the sleeves felt lining, and hung them up to dry. Then I sponged out copious quantities of water from the wing spoilers wells. In the meantime the cumulus popped with aggressive vigor and it became very apparent to me that there would be major overdevelopment. By the time the contest director started the Sports Class, we all were milling around Ephrata at 5,000' flying in rain. The weather pattern was very difficult to read. We had Mansfield as the first mandatory turnpoint. It was behind a wall of solid rain.
By the time that the contest director changed task to B, "go to any turnpoint", I was cruising solidly under a band of clouds extending to Soap Lake at 5,100'. There I caught a thermal to a 6,500' cloud base of a long street extending half way to Dry Falls, and saw another street from Dry Falls towards Nills Corner. I made my decision. I backtracked two miles so that I would reenter the 5-mile radius start cylinder, and then charged ahead at great speed towards Dry Falls, cruising 95 mph and maintaining altitude. By Blue Lake I climbed under another street, and rounded the Dry Falls turnpoint at 5,600'. About two miles north of the TP the cloud which previously looked like it would provide me the same boost as the previous ones just simply started to disintegrate. There was another one better looking one ahead. I decided to forego a weak remaining thermal under the disintegrating cloud and headed for the next cloud ahead. I was flying right over the Highway 17 (from Coulee City to Bridgeport). My altitude started dropping 5,100 - 3 miles further 4,500' - and another 2 miles further 4,000'. That's where I turned around and headed for the few sunlit areas on the ground I passed, in hope that they would kick new thermals. At 3,800 I made a circle above one- nothing - then I headed southeast for 3,5 miles to another sunlit spot, got there at 3,300' MSL, 1,000 AGL (above ground). That's when it became obvious to me that I better pick a good landing spot before trying to catch another thermal. I found such an area about 1,5 miles east, one large fallow field on top of a hill, with another adjacent to it, in a shallow valley but with a good retrieve road alongside it. There was a house on its eastern end with large poplar tree. Its leaves were rustling in the southwesterly wind, nicely dubbing as a windsock.I arrived at the area 700' above the ground (of course, in flight, I only had a feeling I was getting quite close to the ground... all these measurements are derived after the fact, from a datalogger track, superimposed over a 3-dimensional landscape). I still made two last ditch effort turns searching for lift but wind was rapidly drifting me away from the landing site; I was not gaining, so after three turns, then 500' above the ground, I fully concentrated on landing safely. One concern were powerlines coming from the south and possibly crossing the little valley I intended to dip into. But being that close I clearly saw the lines veered off towards the house, and did not cross the valley. I headed directly into the wind, flew past the tree and then straightened slightly to the right, flying parallel with furrows of the fallow field, and parallel with the access road, about a wingspan from it. The touchdown was smooth; luckily, the rocks in the field were not very large (the largest were only about 4 inches), I did not hear any clanking or anything when touching down and rolling to a stop. Once all was quiet, I shouted YES! a safe landing! and was relieved.
I recorded coordinates - took map, landing card, and cell phone to top of hill on the south side of the valley (no reception in the dale)- passing on my info to Karly
and Emily who at that time were on the highway travelling towards Moses Lake to see a quilt show. I hiked up the hill one more time, for the first time I forgot my camera.

I made a series of panorama pictures. When I was done, I realized that about five feet from me a rattle snake was curled up. From a safe distance I snapped two pictures of it too. Then v e r y gingerly, lifting my feet high walking through the tall grass and sagebrush I descended. At that time a woman was coming out from the house, accompanied by two Doberman dogs. She was Gina Kramer, and the dogs Bully and Sophia. Back at the house there was a third, thirteen year old dog. Gina had a day off from her six-day a week job at Grand Coulee City where she worked as a cook and a waitress.
At home she was cooking a week's supply of meals and cakes. She offered me a glass of water and two oatmeal cookies. She gave Karly over her phone more accurate directions how to get to her place, and then we sat on the porch watching the dogs play, passing time until around four o'clock when in a cloud of dust, the trailer appeared on the horizon entering the little valley. She and the dogs came to greet Emily and Karly, and watched for a while as we were disassembling the glider and loading it into its trailer. The retrieve went without a glitch thanks to the well coordinated and knowledgeable crew.
This same day, only one pilot managed to outsmart the overdeveloping rainbands. He decided to go behind them in the direction of Quincy and actually stayed dry for the rest of his entire flight. For his 84 miles he was rewarded initially by a full 600 points; later downgraded to 473. The second-placing pilot had to crank up his motor after having flown 126 miles (!) so technically he landed out. He received 322 points. And I - for my valiant effort to go somewhere - and landing out 38 miles out, received just 91 points. But every point is good to have. They may count in the end. And by the way, the replacement mike worked great, even though I didn't use it to broadcast my outlanding.

Wednesday June 29.
The Wenatchee World sent two reporters to Ephrata to cover the local northwest central Washington pilot and his crew in the contest - me, Karly, and Emily. The writer Rick Steigmeyer took notes and photographer Tom Williams with 25 lbs of assorted camera gear took hundreds of pictures during the morning and early afternoon.

This morning the contest management told is this would be the first contest day,
discounting the previous day's results. For Sports Class the task was set to fly to
three designated turn areas - circles around turnpoint. The first turn area was 25
miles around Mansfield, the second 20 miles around Odessa, and third 10 miles around US Highway 2 intersection where it crosses Moses Coulee. After a shaky start, when I was dangerously close to landing out just 17 miles out on course (I was down to 1,200' over the ground then)... [show baro], I managed to climb out, and then had no real problems since. The clouds in the Mansfield area looked very good so I stretched my penetration clear to the far limit, going 25 miles past Mansfield, all the way to Anderson. Then I looked at the big blue hole between that location and the next turn, and decided to circumnavigate it in a wide arc going far north, where there were frequent cu's marking lift. (The best contestant decided to go to the second turn via direct route, through the blue, and managed to find lift, and making very good time.) The cloud route was not the best after all; half of the clouds were dead by the time I got to them, and I ended up finding best lift away from them, in the blue. There were some big clouds in the area of Odessa so I flew about five miles past the TP, trying to maximize my miles. [As it turned out, the best scoring contestants flew just barely inside the turn areas, flying a lot shorter flights, but considerably faster.] From north of Odessa, enough deep into the turn area, I was moving fairly quickly as far as Wilson Creek but that's where things started to deteriorate rapidly. On the shore of Billy Clap Lake I did not have a glide to Ephrata, and still I was at least ten miles from the outside circle border of the third TP. I saw Roy Clark heading for Ephrata, and thought he gave up on completing the task. [It turned out he found a good thermal near Soap Lake which enabled him to tip toe to the 3rd TP and penetrate it before final gliding to Ephrata.] I went on a direct course to the 3rd TP, stopping for every scrap of lift; once getting uncomfortably low, to 4,500' near Summer Falls but then climbed up to 6800 which enabled me to cross over the plateau west of Snow Lakes, and got as far as 4 miles south of the 3rd TP, hoping to connect to good looking clouds there. However, they didn't work for me, and I had to make a nervous 18 mile long finish, starting from 5,500' - and having to arrive at 1,700 to be 500 feet above the airport. So I had just 3,800 at my disposal. I turned out it was more than enough; actually I finished at 2,100' MSL.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Shortly after the Contest Director let us go on course, he got on the radio again, and said that the previous day was found to be valid after all. I was rather annoyed; because based on the preliminary results, that day's winner had a full 500 points lead on others. Well, then it was discounted; and after the second day - counting June 29 score - I remained in the third place out of fourteen contestants. Not too bad! Emily and Karly were still at the airport when I landed, Emily even got to catch my wing. They were returning home that afternoon, to drive the next day to Goldendale to pick up Erik. I had an enjoyable evening in the clubhouse and went to bed in our tent at Oasis by ten. In the middle of the night I got out, there were some brightest stars in the sky. It bode for a strong day.

Thursday June 30
Organizers declared for Sports Class again an area task, with 25 mile radius around Wilbur, 20 miles around Chelan, and 20 miles around an odd TP whose name everyone has trouble pronouncing, Canniual Creek, about 13 miles north of Odessa. I was towed up at 12:41 and immediately after the release ran into trouble, the thermal that I hoped I released in didn't work, and after 13 minutes of struggling I was just a few hundred feet above the hills, at 2300', already heading for a relight. Over a wind-facing slope I ran into narrow, strong thermal and worked it patiently for the next 12 minutes until I was high enough. It took me full 15 minutes to get back up to the release altitude, and altogether almost half an hour since the take off before I could relax. This maneuvering sapped a good deal of energy from me right at the start. Finally, at 13:33 I started out, from 7,000'. There were about ten miles apart spaced clouds en route to Wilbur, and so the cruising went well. The clouds in Wilbur area towards Seven Bays developed nice flat dark bases so I decided to again head as far into the turn area as possible, turning 25 miles east of Wilbur.
The clouds towards the west looked good, crossing of Banks Lake was uneventful, and east of Mansfield I met with an open class ship (HW) under some incredibly working clouds. I was able to keep up with him cruising for about five miles, but that was it - amazing how these huge gliders float while charging ahead in excess of 100 mph!

There were broken clouds near Chelan, as the west wind picked up to over 20 kts. In hindsight I should not have gone that far, instead should have just nicked the Chelan turn area while still under the street. Besides, it was already 4 o'clock and I was only at Chelan, with over 100 miles still to go. The day was supposed to end after 5. I reconnected with the cloud street east of Mansfield, however, and was able to cruise well. Near Hartline I climbed to over 10,000' and was able to stay high turning five miles past the C. Creek turnpoint. There were still some good looking clouds farther east, but I chickened out and started heading for home. Half way to Wilson Creek I dropped to 6,000 and was able to climb 4,000', giving me enough altitude to start my 33 mile long final glide, against stiff wind which at times was gusting at Ephrata to 19 knots. I had to force myself to stick to McCready rules and go really fast in areas of sink, robbing myself of altitude but cumulatively losing less of it than if I flew at best calm air glide speed. My computer kept telling me I was 1000 feet below glide slope but gradually I kept inching up on the slope, eventually finishing comfortably high at 2,500'. Proverbially, during the last five miles there were some strong lift bubbles, bumping me up. I racked up the most miles of all contestants - 243 but they were not the fastest flown. The winner flew full sixty miles less, obviously avoiding less producing regions with still penetrating the turn areas. There is so much to learn in speed soaring. I ended up sixth for the day and just barely hung on to my
third place overall. I was tired as I was tying down the glider, and had to be on my best behavior not to offend anybody by some snide remarks. Emily and Karly showed up with Erik, he went to play outside up with some other kids after Emily chased him off from playing video games in the club house basement, missing all the excitement of gliders coming back from their tasks. That evening the Newgards prepared a huge BBQ by donation, which was a great feast. We stayed late and did not get back to our tent until about ten thirty, already dark for any campfire. I was too tired to look through the Wenatchee World Thursday June 30 paper which ran our story on the front page, with a large picture of Emily giving me a sendoff kiss while I was seated in the glider just prior to launch, and a nice photo of Karly also on the front. The article continued on page 8 for still quite a bit, reporting accurately about our flying. I read the article at my leisure the following day.

Friday July 1
This was supposed to be a challenging, blue-thermals-only day. But after the pilots' meeting some clouds were visible in the area of Davenport, so there was a chance that the true challenging day without any cloud markers would not materialize - to separate the men from boys, as the saying goes. Already prior to grid time the task committee declared that Sports Class would have to be aloft for 3 hours, with two compulsory turnpoints being Odessa and Wilbur, to be taken in sequence. After that we could pick any TPs. The day would be challenging, though. The wind on the ground was blowing 15 knots from the southwest, and more at altitude. After the launch I again had problems. Being one of the last ones I should have the benefit of joining existing gaggles and climb up, but where I was released there were only two other gliders, just barely above the release altitude, frantically searching themselves. I had to backtrack to the area between the radio tower and the canal; and at an uncomfortably close proximity had to avoid a towplane with a glider on tow. Immediately after the encounter I rolled into workable lift; [show trace] this time my climb out was very plain and straightforward... in one long continuous drift of almost 8 (!) miles downwind directly east I climbed from 3,000' to 8,200'. That was convenient, since that is where we were supposed to go. All I had to do was backtrack only half a mile
to repenetrate the start cylinder (which was set at 5 miles radius around a point near the Ephrata airport terminal building), and on my way I was. The first leg to Odessa was terrific. Despite the blue conditions, I could see that other gliders were finding lift elsewhere (prior to starting, so lift was occurring in more places). Besides, I could see south of Wilson Creek a dust devil forming, so I headed directly for it at the best cruising speed corrected to 4 MC and 20 knot tailwind. It turned out that my ground speed on first leg to Odessa was 93 mph; terrific! I rounded the turn and cockily continued at the same fashion towards Wilbur. About five miles north of Odessa I had a crisis. I dropped to 4,800' and lost 20 minutes scratching for lift before eventually continuing on, this time rather gingerly. By contrast, my Odessa to Wilbur leg averaged 28 mph!!! I was very disappointed, knowing that I could not catch up and that my overall speed would be poor. But then things took a turn for better. Once I got to the clouds, I was hoisted to over 10,000' and soaring got actually enjoyable again. After rounding the second compulsory turnpoint, Wilbur, I decided to head to Creston, where there were clouds on the way. I rounded Creston without stopping and then decided to try for Grand Coulee Airport. There were good clouds only 2/3 of the way to there; I would be taking chances to reconnect. I decided to go for it. I climbed as high as I could at the last cloud, to 10,900', and headed into the blue. The turnpoint was 9 miles away, I rounded it and immediately headed south, going another 9 miles before finding any new lift. I was down to 7,000' then. There must have been lots of sink and headwind; since covering 18 miles and dropping 4,000 translated to about 4.5 miles per thousand feet (or a 24 to one glide ratio). I was relieved to find lift over an area where from a distance I spotted a small dust devil; and climbed it to 9,200. I decided then not to go directly to finish, but instead try to pick up some speed detouring via Wilson Creek. There were clouds leading to it, whereas the route towards Ephrata was almost blue. Southeast of Coulee City I was again down to 7,000' and frantically searched for lift from a dust devil I spotted from ten miles away. It kept drifting away, then disappeared when over a green irrigation circle. Eventually I centered it, with relief, and climbed to 9,200. At that time I started calculating the final glide to Ephrata, via Wilson Creek it was then 28 miles. The Ephrata automatic weather radio broadcasted wind being 220° at 15 knots, gusting to 19. Keeping the MC at 4 and adjusting the headwind setting to 17 on my glide calculator, it said that I should make it. About five miles after Wilson Creek I heard incoming calls of pilots finishing. One of them was Bravo Six announcing he was approaching the finish gate from the southwest, from Quincy. A light went of in my head, realizing the great potential I had to improve my overall speed. Since I was still at 7,200' south of Billy Clap Lake, 14 miles out I could likely make the great looking clouds that formed over Soap Lake, and some other ones that extended all the way to Beezley Hills. I could easily add Beezley; and, with some luck, perhaps even Quincy! I immediately switched my final-finishing mode to cruising and conserved my altitude so that I could reach the Soap Lake clouds as high as possible to reconnect with their feeding thermals where they widened at altitude. The plan succeeded. With a grin I floated up while gliding forward, and finally four miles west of Soap Lake stopped to turn. I climbed again to 9,400' and headed straight for Beezley turnpoint, ten miles west of Ephrata. I was able to maintain altitude bumping under the clouds; taking the last dissipating one about a mile southwest of Beezley. At that time I firmly decided not to chicken out and glide out all the way to Quincy airport, and then drift on the 20 knot tailwind to Ephrata. These maneuvers must definitely have improved my overall speed; since my Beezley to Quincy leg averaged 85 mph, and Quincy to finish 100 mph. As I landed, I was very thankful to B6 and the clouds west of Ephrata that enabled me adding extra 36 miles in mere 24 minutes to my overall distance. As I was tying down CD, I looked up to the west, and all those clouds were gone already. The timing was perfect. I still ended up being the seventh for the day; and dropped to fourth place overall. But without the Quincy bonus I would have had a lot worse score... my speed would have been instead of 51.05 mph over 189.11 miles a speed of 46.33 mph over 153.11 miles; and multiplying it my Sports Class handicap factor of 0.903 a sluggish 41.84 mph. Glancing at the score sheets for Day 4, with that speed I would end up in the 12th place for the day, and collect 41.84 (my speed)/57.58 (winner's speed) * 1000 = 727 points instead of 801 I got. That would make me drop to fifth place overall after four days.

Saturday July 2.
Starting in the fourth place position overall, I still had a chance to place either third or even second if I flew well. The number one position was securely in Willamette Soaring club Alex Kain's hands - unless he'd make a spectacular blunder and landed out. The day started extremely early. At 8:30 there were already small cu's forming, and by 9:00 they started streeting. Long distance flyers could have launched already. Much to their dismay (Helmut Gebenus was on the ramp ready to go at 9:45) no towpilot showed up. Eventually at 10:45 Rick Edris motored up in his Zulu Eight DG 800S motorglider. Helmut still was waiting for a towpilot. We were launched speedily ten minutes after the 12:10 grid pilots meeting. My take-off time was 12:33 and I started on course at 13:07. Our task was to fly to Nills Corner turnpoint, and then to any TPs of our choice within a 3 hour minimum task time. There were nice looking clouds on course and I thought that going would be problem-less. I was making good time, connecting well at clouds until about ten miles from the TP. There I chickened out, didn't dare into the blue hole, and made a wide detour to the west. Eventually I spotted a nice dust devil just half a mile west from Nills, headed to it and nicely marked it for the incoming horde of other pilots who started behind me. Leeches! Oh well. Still, my average speed on the first leg was 63 mph.The short-lived clouds spooked me and I wavered which TP to take next. Eventually I opted for more-or-less backtracking into familiar territory, by choosing Dry Falls as my next turn. I was rather conservative in charging ahead, against the wind, and my second leg speed averaged a mere 42 mph. Realizing at Dry Falls that I was not making good time, I decided to "go for it" and chose to head to Davenport. In the distance the clouds appeared to be streeting, after a while actually threatening to overdevelop. Perhaps subconsciously or just being drifted by the wind, I started veering off in the direction of closer Wilbur; about halfway to there I upped my courage and spiced it with some objective reasoning. When I overcame a minor crisis southwest of Wilbur when I got below my 6,000'low band minimum (I sank to 5,300' before catching a good thermal lifting me to 9,900') I decided to go to Creston, thinking that if conditions looked good there and ahead, I would go to Davenport after all. The speed to Creston was a good 64 mph, also the clouds ahead were good. The Creston to Davenport leg was excellent; I averaged 79 mph and stayed above 8,000'. At Davenport I thought of going home while the going was good. Looking at my watch, however, reminded me that I might arrive too early, under the 3 hours minimum, and incur penalty points. I switched strategy and headed to Wilbur instead; not under such good conditions as the direct route home would have been, but still good. Seven miles southwest of Wilbur I might have blundered into the same good thermal that hoisted me before so high while going east, this time it lifted me to to 9,100'. Still well below the final glide slope, I started the finish glide from 41 miles out. Ahead there were good looking cu's which I planned to use as bump up zones, to flatten my glide so that eventually I'd be on slope. I set my calculator to the same values as the day before, MC 4 and 17 knots headwind. The conditions really did not change, as Ephrata ASOS radio was confirming. So were the white-capped waves on ponds and lakes I was passing over. At 28 miles out I stopped for a brief six-turn thermal, bumping up from 7,800 to 8,500'. After that I did not turn, and continued cruising at about 100 mph indicated airspeed, as dictated by the MC/headwind settings. This was far higher than the best L/D for still air; but I had to keep reminding myself that I was not travelling in still air. Far from, the air was very turbulent. I had enough altitude for a speedy finish; when over the fish hatchery lake it was good to have the reserve, for there I encountered a two-mile wide area of vicious sink. I finished at a for me an a-typical 650' AGL altitude; but with a good airspeed reserve (100 mph). Due to the gusting wind
blowing across the ramp from the west, I decided to land diagonally, setting for final over the 20-02 runway, and aiming for the spot where the parallel taxiway enters into the Ephrata ramp.

(After landing Ron Bellamy commented he noticed my landing safety enhancing technique; for a second I thought it might not have been so safe if another glider were landing at the same time - not diagonally but straight. However, I did broadcast my positions and did not hear anyone on the radio telling he was also about
to land.)

The contest was over. A weight was taken off of my chest while at the same time a feeling of emptiness settled in. This feeling lasted just a short while, there were
still tasks to do - disassemble the trailer, download the GPS trace, turn it in. My crew exemplarily assisted in helping put the glider away; due to high wind Craig Funston's extra hand was welcome.
I decided to stay for the evening closing banquet which this time was held at the American Legion hall behind DeeKay's. The contest management recognized the help of all volunteers, among them Karly's who with her clipboard was recording launch times and with her cheerful attitude added to the enjoyment on the grid line. She received a Certificate of Appreciation. Much to my surprise I too was awarded a diploma - for the 3rd place overall in the 2005 Region 8 Sports Class Championship.