WBC 2016

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As usual, the XC season for Evergreen Soaring started in March; however it did not really start in earnest this year until the beginning of May. Actually, it was a very rainy early season followed by an unusually warm and stable period. As a consequence all the better flights were made on a few selected days in the first half of May. The total number of XC flights in 2016 on the west side was far below the usual. Nonetheless quite a few pilots made their personal best west side flights indicating a general rise in XC capability.

Ron Clark seems to have a firm hold on first place in the annual WBC with a great flight of 661 OLC points flying along the spine of the Cascades ranging from Jack Mountain close to Ross Lake to the little mountain airfield of Tieton (south of White Pass). This is also the best west side XC flight ever, beating Ron's previous best flight of 555.9 points in 2014 Brad Hill flying his homebuilt Tetra-15 took second place with 517.5 points and flew the largest triangle (347 km). Arlington was not the only starting point for XC flying. Tim Henneghan flying out of his home field of Evergreen (near Black Diamond) and several other pilots flying out of Bergseth from PSSA also posted some good flights. Guyula Cserfoi from WVSA made several good flights out of Centralia, showing that there is good flying in the South as well. And Noel Wade made the first XC flight out of Green Valley after having to land there and having to wait for an hour to get a tow out of there. An unplanned first was achieved by Tory Tolton and Paul Adriance - they flew the G103 from AWO down to Bergseth (home of PSSA) and had to land there, the first soaring flight from Arlington to Bergseth (with landing).

Several pilots got into new gliders and quickly joined the XC gang. Henry Rebeck took over Chris Young's LS-8/18 and made the first flight from Arlington to round Mount Rainier (and back) and Thomas V d Velde wasted no time to show off his mountain soaring abilities in his just purchased Discus.

So here are the results of the WBC 2016 as of 9/16/2016 for flights with over 200 points:

Let's see this list grow!