Robb Milley (aka Dirtfoot)

The Rat Race
Comp Dates from Tuesday 5/31 - Saturday 6/4/05

A great time in Oregon; the best and most flying I’ve ever done.  Two plus hours a day for six days was exhausting, but after two days off I was dieing to get back into the air.  This must be what a junkie feels like when he can’t get his fix.  I need a twelve-step program...

Monday was the first flying day, and I had two flights and a great time.  We have it good here, but being able to drive up to launch and fly in any direction is great.  Launches to the north and west allow pilots to lay out two across and three deep.  The main LZ is huge, but the wind shifts constantly and twice I checked the flags before setting up my approach then had a down wind landing.  Almost every other open area is a OK LZ, and one place the owner drove out into the field to put my wing in the trunk and drive me out to the main road.  After that days flying, being the clever engineer type, I downloaded the Flytec software from the internet and transferred my barographs.

LESSON:  Do not ever do this again!

The first connection to the software reset my vario to the default settings of 1,600 fpm up on the vario, and 1,600 fpm down on the sink alarm.  Then it turned off the audio.

The next morning was the first day of the comp. I had my new wing (now three hours of flight time), my new helmet (2 hours) and new GPS.  Just no beep, beep, beep, even when I could see I was going up.  No big deal, just avoid the other 120 pilots while I figure this out... After 40 minutes of trying to stare at my vario, press the buttons that I just know must work, and avoiding the other wings, I was back in the LZ.  I packed up and rushed back to launch.  This second time I made it to the start cylinder across the valley, but only with enough altitude to make it back to the LZ.  A discouraging day, but since all the top guys were there as well I didn’t feel too, too bad.

The next morning I enlisted the help of all the instructors I could find to figure out what was going on with my vario.  About the sixth person was Marty who spend quite a bit of time trying to get some sound out of it with no luck.  Fortunately Riss, man among men, offered up his backup, a small chirper that should mount on your helmet.  I of course mounted it on my flight deck and couldn’t hear it.  So I made the start cylinder and dirted; then I relaunched and dirted w/o reaching the start.  Last launch is the one that gets counted for points...

That night I spent a long time with the software and the instructions, and found there are features in the software that are not controllable from the panel keys.  Clearly a Swiss design.  I managed to turn the sound on and change the sensitivity to 4 fps from 1,600.  I was in business.

Thursday morning I was in the dumps.  After two days of competition, I was 103 out of 100.  How much worse could it get?  My goal had been to perform better than last year, and clearly that wasn’t happening.  I launched after the rush with low expectations, but got right up with that happy beep, beep, beep in my ears.  When I was high enough I went on glide for burnt and came in at the bottom of a gaggle.  Using a super secret Josh Cohn trick I surprised the shit out of myself by climbing to the top of the stack while the rest were looking around.  I was on fire.  I continued along the course stinking high and thoroughly amazed.  Then I made a tactical error, which had me over a 100 ft knoll for over a half-hour before a cloud came by and turned out the lights.  I put down on a grassy airstrip, but had out distanced the previous days champ so I felt pretty good about the day.

On Friday I dirted again, twice, wiping out all the points gained on Thursday and making me give serious thought to selling all my gear and taking up mountain biking again.  Or checkers.  That night was the lowest point in my flying career.  I’ve landed in lemon groves and been less discouraged than that.  How can you have another years experience, better equipment, better conditions, and fly worse?  How soon will this be over?

On Saturday the planets lined up again.  I found myself further along the course than all the other flights combined.  And ahead of some very accomplished Topa pilots as well!  So naturally I got greedy and ended up in the rotor between Burnt and Poormans getting thrown around by the rotor and the thermals.  I put it down in a cow pasture and packed up.  Retrieve came along and brought me to goal where those very accomplished Topa pilots came in for perfect landings.

Looking back, this was not the event that was conceived a few years ago.  This was not for the new kids on the block to learn what a comp is about.  This was a chance for the big boys to get points.  The field of entrants, the task committee, the tasks; they all were full on comps.  Overall, I think I did better than last year.  It’s just the points that don’t reflect that.  And I’m defiantly in for next year; we’ve already found a place that sleeps 10...

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