Today, I attended the Space Elevator Games at the Davis County Fairgrounds. Between 11 and 2, reasonable weather permitted some racers to climb. The 400 foot tool crane was erected. The Univ. of British Columbia racer started first, running almost to the top of the 120 meter ribbon at about 1-1.5 meters per second. Then a California high-school team, using flexible solar panels, ran to the top of the crane at slow speed of around 1 meter sec. Wind and intermitent clouds continued to present problems. At one point, the 400 foot climbing ribbon oscillated violently in a perfect one-quarter harmonic (you could actually see the perfect four divisions of the ribbon's length) - making a low sound - and the largest jazz bass that I've ever seen. Next, the favorites Kansas City Pirates tried to climb in a rising wind. They were favored to win this game's $500,000 climbing pursue that requires a mininum speed of 2 meters/second. This private group, that showed up with a crew of over ten members was impressive with a large array of solar mirrors. Two-thirds up the ribbon tether, a wind rose and literally blew about a 1/5 the solar collectors off their climber. The games took a break for an hour to let the wind die down. Other competitors where stating that they would not climb considering some of their collector solar cells cost several hundred thousand dollars per climber. The event holder stated they would try to run more crews this afternoon and again on Monday. Some teams had to leave today and were leaving with hard feelings towards the Utah weather that prevented them from competing this year. I took about 50 digital pictures which were all lost in an SD disk media failure. Urgh! Fortunately, there is an official Space Elevator Games blog site with lots of pictures. http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/ The climbers will continue this afternoon and again on Monday. It is possible that this year's $500,000 climbing purse will go unclaimed. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net