The second race is in the books - Entry fees of $300 per bird is now due. Birds are still trickling in - will update throughout the day on Wincompanion - which seems to have frozen and needs rebooting. Congrats to the 4 birds on the 1st drop. The birds flew past the loft and had at least two of the bigger groups coming from the NorthWest.... we had some North winds during the race which may have pushed them North and birds had to work their way back...

There will be a few birds offered - list to be published.

Paypal: stephenfurlonge@yahoo.com

Zelle: 480-215-4255

Arizona Classic Derby

965 E Desert Lane

Gilbert AZ 85234

We are pulling in the Race #2 to Tuesday - intially had planned for Wednesday but we have some conflicts with the logistics on Wednesday. With the relative ease of the 1st race - hopefully this works out well. Should be another day with light tailwinds 50 - 70 degrees from release to arrival. Basketing list will be up tonight.

Tentative

Race 3 - 18th April

Race 4 - 25th April

Race 5 - May 1st or 2nd

First race jitters are out of the way - we had a few hiccups with getting on the way and debugging the Race ID in Wincom not matching the Unikon Race ID - but eventually got it lined up and communicating ~! 

The birds released in to a nice 52 degrees with some tailwinds 5-10 mph ESE and arrived with perfect temps of 70 - could not have asked for a better temperature. Hopefully the last few stragglers make it in - Congrats to Fanway Family for 1st in the clock - a beautiful trophy (seen on our website) will be engraved with all the specifics. Congratulations to the others who could have easily ran in 1st also.... 

Continue with training 55 miles on Sunday and Monday, and we will pick the best day for the second race by midweek. The first two races are usually the easiest - by the 3rd race is where the separation typically starts.

One day at a time....

With the remnants of the unusual heat/winds earlier in the week, first race is pushed to Friday @ 125 miles - basketing list will be up Thursday night. Seems like the new name should be Windy City - every single day in the last 30 days have been windy ~! This will set us up for the 2nd race 5 days after that ~! Historically we have always done 5 days between 1st and 2nd race, 5-7 days between races, and at least one long toss between races but typically a 50 and a 75 between races. For April forecast mid 80's - so would be an ample challenge. Entry fees due before the 3rd race -

The majority of the birds are looking good and flying well - we still have that bottom 10% lagging - but such is racing ~!

1st race is not happening this weekend as we alluded to -We will continue to short toss 45-55-70 until this abnormal heat wave passes and shoot for middle of the week 1st race.

One Arizona combine cancelled their races this weekend, the AZ Federation did not and will be flying into 97 degree temperatures with a headwind on arrival - best of luck - I only shipped 12 ~~!

Today expected 97, Sunday expected 99, and upper 90's thru Tuesday - abnormal 15 degrees above normal - we should be at the perfect highs of 84 for this time.

Training is progressing ~ The birds have a few longer tosses now ~! It's time to choose an appropriate day for the 1st race. We will run into abnormal temps later this week - so we have to decide if the short race can get released early enough and allow ample time for them to make it home before the abnormal heat of the day. Any wrong turn - could be disastrous ~!

We often rest and pause after tough tosses - but time is running out - we do not want to run into extended temperatures for the Final. We have taken our time (too much so) but the birds wer not coming as one group even on the short tosses. We like to see them coming together before moving out further - there are still about 10% of the birds not performing as we would like ~! For the majority of the birds- the conditioning is great - birds feel good - eating well - and have good body weight.

Our own birds on the same race course is our control group - we use these to gauge the OLR birds' readiness. Our personal season has been successful so far with 2 Federatin wins, top performances close to the top on Champion Loft, Champion Bird and currently leading average speed.

Training continues Wed and Thur -

Entry fees will be due after the 2nd race - just my personal decision to not have breeders pay for birds that cannot fly the short races!

Queuing up for two long tosses this week - and will pick the best day after that for the 150 mile.

Its been unpredictably windy, rainy, cloudy and crappy here the last couple days and so we have just been loft flying for a little bit. During these windy days, so easy for birds to fly low and hit wires, broken legs. We used this time to rest and build back up the birds.

We had a smash toss yesterday.

The K-factor was in the red zone (we did not check before the toss – our fault) and the temperature swings from 40 degrees at release rapidly warming to 85 degrees.

The winds also kicked up to 15-20 mph SW cross winds turning into head winds later in the day.

As of this morning, we had 180 or so home – and they are trickling in. We will upload at end of day again.

The Arizona Federation also had MASSIVE losses yesterday with many flyers NO REPORT and not having birds.

My loft had 13/30 home on the day.

So we will pause here and reset again. Our planned 75 and 90 mile tosses will be pushed out later in the week and so will our 150 mile race ~!

Will add more comments later as the day progresses – just not a good day ~!

Birds are on the road everyday that is not windy or rain. We had several days of wind or rain this week - and took the birds out shorter than we wanted to go. This next tosses are 35-45-55-75. They have had ample short tosses - we are being overly cautious on these windy days as we lost one basket on our initial 25 mile toss.

Last Friday and Saturday was wind and rain. Our Federation course from our 250 mile OLR station was headwinds 10-20 all the way - we did manage to get another Federation win this season at 950+ ypm several minutes ahead.

Unusual weather patterns everywhere - we just have to be prudent on distance, days and time that we train ~~!

Birds are on the road ~!

This week we will try to stretch them out.... the windy last week saw damaging gusts, dust storms on several days and culminated in an 87 mph Federation race from 200 miles on Saturday (YES - 87 MPH - possibly a record ~~!!)

We are being overly cautious - trying to get those repetitive short tosses in - before we take them out further.