Thursday - Weather & More Calibration

We had some pretty heavy rain during the practice week, mainly at night but also at other times. As always the campsite becomes a drab and rather miserable place when it rains. However, most practice days the team were able to get some flying in, often flying several times a day, practicing spot landings, finding local ground features and re-calibrating fuel consumption. You'd probably think that fuel calibration was something they would have sorted out before they left for Czech - and you'd be right. However, Jihlava is 1800 feet above sea level. That alone changes the fuel consumption. Also, takeoffs are harder because the air is less dense - the usual 100 metre deck has been extended to 110 metres to deal with this. Even so, on a hot day with nil wind or, worse still, thermic conditions where the wind direction changes so quickly that some aircraft may end up taking off downwind, lifting off before the end of the deck may be a challenge. As failure to clear the deck results in a 20% task penalty many pilots have adjusted the pitch of the propellers purely to make sure they don't run out of the box before leaving the ground. And, of course, once they have reset their propellers their historic fuel consumption data, vital for soaring, endurance and other tasks where fuel economy is an element, might as well be thrown in the bin.