We loft-flew the birds today for 1 1/2 hours with some birds staying up for about 2 hours. I posted a short video clip on our 'FB UPDATES' page.
Terry will have our 'Average Speed' Results on the website shortly.
We are watching the weather for a good day to fly the 225 Mile Race. The problem is wind. Checking the weather at Noble Oklahoma, which is the middle of our race course, today would have been up to 15 mph tail winds. As we have all learned, that means even more tail winds here. Tomorrow is calling for up tp 21 mph head wind. Monday 22 mph right side wind and Tuesday 18 mph left side wind. Other than the tail wind day, any of the others would be great at half the wind speed, but not what is predicted. If anything reasonable develops, and it changes everyday, we will let you know. Just know that I am checking it constantly.
We loft-flew the birds this morning for 1 1/2 hours. Right at the end a strong wind blew in with up to 30 mph winds. All birds trapped unharmed.
Tomorrow is calling for super strong winds again, so we won't let the birds out if that is the case.
We are closely monitoring the weather forecasts for the best day to fly our 225 Mile Race.
3 birds returned today. They are now posted. We still have 2 missing.
We will loft-fly the birds tomorrow and give fresh grit and minerals.
The payouts listed on the 'PAYOUTS' Page will be the amounts paid out this year with the following exceptions: we will pay down to 23 birds on the 225 and 24 birds on the 325. The original payouts were based on 250 birds going to the first race. We had 247 birds. By having 3 less birds, there is $450 less in the prize pool. This means the River Valley Roundup Race is adding $50 to make the payouts this amount.
Good luck to everyone,
Bobby
(479) 719-3995
The date on this post shows January 13. It should say January 12.
We just updated the race results list from today. We still have 5 birds out.
After the first 2 birds, we had a very large group of birds arrive. As they started going in they were startled and most flew back up into the sky and stayed up quite a while. Many of the birds clocking in at 16 or 17 minutes from 1st were actually equal 3rd. I'm disappointed they will not get the credit they deserve. These birds performed spectacularly. Please take this into consideration as you evaluate their results.
The winds yesterday and for the next couple of days are predicted to be much stronger than today. Unless we waited another week (not an option), today was the right day to fly the 150. Today's GROUND WIND was 6-8 mph. Obviously the winds at ALTITUDE were stronger than this. I don't know where to check for this. I've tried to look at a site that shows this and could not understand anything I was looking at. Our next 2 races are going to be a challenge. They will not be tail winds.
We posted a basket list on the website. We plan to release the birds Tuesday morning at Purcell Oklahoma for our 150 mile race.
We had to retire FLYHOME 2027. This bird performed well on the 100 Mile Race but unfortunately injured his right wing somehow.
We posted a short clip of the birds loft flying today on our 'FB UPDATES' Page.
Good luck to all,
Vita 2745 returned a couple days ago.
We are looking at driving the birds to the 150 mile race location on Monday afternoon and releasing them Tuesday morning.
ARPU 62091 returned today.
It's cold and windy, with low heavy clouds, and raining here today.
We are hopeful we will be able to fly the 150 Mile Race on Monday.
Slightly over 75% of our birds were home in 28 minutes and 17 seconds from the first bird today. All the later birds we saw returned from the east. They most likely flew by the loft to the north and had to turn around. We still have 13 birds out. Hopefully they will return in the morning.
We will watch the weather for a good day to fly the 150 Mile Race. Hopefully we will be able to in about 5 days.
The birds are loaded on the trailer. All crates have straw. We only have 15 birds in each crate. This prevents stress and allows all birds to drink without fighting for the privilege. We will put fresh water in the trays for 30 minutes before releasing the birds in the morning at approximately 9:00.
We will use live clocking.
A basket list is posted for the 100 Mile Race. We are watching the weather. Right now we plan on racing on Monday morning.
