The sky is totally covered with cumulus clouds in the morning and Jonnie thinks
that we can't even call a task. The forecast says different. It says that the
stalled front over us will go off to the northeast and a high will build over us
with light winds. The lift is forecasted to be strong to 4,500'.
We call a 60 mile sort of triangle task for the flex wings and a 70 mile sort of
a triangle task for the rigid wings, both to the south. We send the flexies
around counter clockwise and the rigids clockwise to the intersection of I4 and
highway 27, south down 27 10 miles to an intersection surrounded by lakes, then
west northwest to Fantasy of Flight and then home north to Quest up highway 33.
The flexies have to go straight south to Fantasy of Flight then east to the
intersection of I4 and highway 27, then north to the intersection of 474 and 27,
then northwest back to Quest. With little or no wind there should be no worries
about getting downwind. We want to keep everyone away from certainb landing
fields that have caused problems lately.
We launch at 12:30 with our first start window at 1 PM and only a 5 kilometer
radius start circle. By 12:40 most of us rigid wing pilots are at cloud base
wondering how to spend the next twenty minutes. We do work our way over to the
edge of the start circle, staying at cloud base, and everyone takes the first
clock. Almost everyone is together at cloud base.
We all pretty much stay together leaving the thermals when we get too close to
the cloud until we get to highway 474. I work some weak lift to the east a bit
while Ollie in front pulls a few folks over to my west. More peel off to him
when they find the lift I'm in weak and I decide to push further east toward
highway 27 where I think that the lift will be stronger and more consistent.
Highway 27 is on the Florida Ridge, the high spots in Florida.
Jacques, Johann and Russell go with me as we quickly work our way down the
highway hitting lift under most of the clouds and looking for the big one. We
get to 4,000' just before our first turnpoint so things are looking pretty good.
When we get to the turnpoint there are the guys we left behind at 474, and now
the nine of us are together again and will be for the rest of the flight.
We head ten miles further south to the next turnpoint finding strong lift to
4,400' wondering if all this good lift is going to be spoiled by all the lakes.
Getting high just before the turnpoint we have to jump across a good sized lake
to the northwest but there are clouds every where and we find lift just on the
other side of the lake.
A few pilots find better lift just behind us over the lake and this will catch
them up and let them get a little ahead of Johann, Ollie, Paul, and I. We have
to keep moving hoping for better lift but trying to stay with the few guys out
in front. Just as we get a few miles east of Fantasy of Flight we climb out at
500 fpm to 4,700'. That will bring us back together almost.
As we make the turnpoint suddenly it feels like we are the dart board in a
dart's tournament as these little pointy things start coming at us fast. We've
run into the flex wings as they make their first turnpoint at Fantasy. It looks
like they will do us little good finding thermals on the way home up 33.
We work our way north finding weak broken lift, nothing that gets me out of
the little hole that I'm in a bit behind the other gliders. It's not until we
get just south of the Seminole sailplane port that we find something that I'm
really happy to be turning in (600 fpm). Ten miles out it looks like we've got a
final glide from 4,200' to goal at Quest with a 5 mph west wind on our left
side.
I'll take one more two minute 500 fpm climb on the way in, but all nine of us
make it into goal within a couple of minutes of each other. Every rigid wing but
one will make it to goal, and Mark Stump will land close to goal.
The flex wings will pound it out on their task and many will make goal also,
although not in one big gaggle like the rigid wings. You can see the
results at the link above (later on Wednesday evening).
We did the task in about 2 hours and 15 minutes, quite a bit less than three
hours, our nominal time. The fastest flex wings appear to have done their
task in less than two and a half hours, their nominal time.
Margaret Johnson contacted the USHPA office a few days ago to
determine if we could help her and her husband find a new home for their Easy
Rider glider. They used to be members of the association. They want to donate an
"original" Easy Rider glider to someone. I put her in touch with Ken Derussy but
apparently, he couldn't help.
Michelle offered to list the glider in the classified section of the USHPA
website but I'm afraid it won't be seen there. Publishing a notice in the July
issue of the magazine won't work for them because they're moving at the end of
May.
Margaret writes:
"Would like to donate to a museum or school, an Easy Rider hang glider built in
1975. It is in good condition and is located in central Texas. It is an
"original." Easy Rider with wings made out of foam and wood. Later versions of
the glider were made with all-aluminum ribs. We are moving approx. May 31, 2006
so please call 325-372-5421 or cell: 320-699-0186.
This is a time sensitive announcement for the owners of the glider because they
will be moving and hope to find a new home for the glider before they move.
Let me know. Margaret doesn't have email so I agreed to call her if you agreed
to include the information in an upcoming issue of the Oz Report. I really
enjoyed talking with her.
Once you are use to getting A's, it's a shock to get a C. The cry for all A's
(we're all above average) continued through the first two days of the Flytec
meet, but has died down now. I don't see a great disappointment with the GAP
parameters as set here at the Flytec meet, but maybe there are some that
continue to harbor resentment. But I think that in general we are having such a
great time that it is hard to really be upset about a few meaningless points.
I did notice that Jonnie thought I was responsible for the GAP parameters for
flex wings at the Flytec meet. Since I'm not, I wonder how he got this
information. I am responsible for the GAP parameters for the rigid wings. I
suggested to David 75 miles and 3 hours after consulting with Ron Gleason and
Jim Yocom.
Here's my response to Brett Hazlett's complaints:
Here's what the GAP authors say (in red, and Brett in blue):
NominalTime: equivalent in time to
NominalDistance. It is the fastest elapsed time, below which the task should be
devalued. It can be considered as the time necessary for the fastest pilot to
fly the NominalDistance. (In the Alps for National competitions, it is generally
suggested at least 2 hours). There is no penalty for having the fastest pilot
take longer to complete the task.
I consider 25 mph to be the actual average speed of the
winning pilot. The GAP authors recommend a minimum time of 2 hours. That
corresponds to fifty miles. Set the minimum at 2.5 hours and that corresponds to
62.5 miles.
To get a fair competition task, you should normally have
pilots in goal and pilots need to be in the air for a period of time so that the
competitors make a series of different decisions, thereby sorting out the best
pilots from the good ones.
Set nominal task distance at 30 miles and assume 25 mph,
and you get a task that is a little more than an hour, like the two days of
flying at the Florida Ridge. Much less difficult tasks than you would think
would be worth 1000 points.
The NominalDistance parameter is the minimum distance that
would still result in a good task worth 1000 points. NominalDistance ties in
with NominalTime, and these two parameters need to be considered together.
That is they are tied together by the expected speed of
the fastest pilot.
The suggested distances are not mandatory, as what makes a
good minimum task length depends on the terrain, the weather that would normally
be expected for the duration of the competition and, quite important, the level
of skill that you would expect from the pilots in the competition.
I hope that explains why I think that there is a
contradiction between what the authors say and what their formula actually does.
At Quest we need to consider that sometimes we will need to fly against a strong
crosswind -because we can't fly East- and therefore we may fly only 40 miles
crosswind in 2.5 hours. In this case, the day will still be a good comp day, in
that it is a good day to compare pilot performance, and therefore should be
70-100% valid.
I interpret this to mean that we should consider the actual accomplishments of all the pilots at past Quest meets. And that the
nominal task distance should be set at the average of the distance flown by all
those pilots. This would include days with cross wind tasks.
GAP doesn't deal well with wide variability in the flight conditions from day to
day. It uses an average for all the days of the competition. Days that are
difficult due to conditions, but still a good test of pilot skills, are under
valued by the GAP system. That is one reason that the actual GAP parameters that
meet directors have used have been lowered from the recommended values. Pilots
complain when they did well on a hard day but GAP didn't give them their due
recognition.
If we use parameters that are too large, the problem that can happen is that 1-2
days in the week of flying will be over-weighted, despite the more average days
being good flying days to compare skill/decisions.
And if we use parameters that are too low then there is no
differentiation between various days. Perhaps that is okay, but that is not what
the GAP authors indicate should be the case.
The recommended GAP parameters are 50-70 km and 2 hours. 70 km = 43.5 miles, the
actual value used in previous Flytec meets. I recall that two hours was the
previous value used in the Flytec meets, although it had no effect on the first
day of the 2006 Flytec meet.
On the first day if the past GAP parameters used at the Flytec meet were used
for that day it would have been worth a little less than 400 points (instead of
300). No one complained about the GAP parameters used in the Flytec meets
previously.
I agree that the first day was a good test of pilot skills and that pilots
should be rewarded handsomely. But the GAP system and the GAP parameters used in
previous Flytec meets didn't do this. What is the difference now?
You can see their issues at their blogs linked to above.
Oh, by the way, day 4, task 3, 1000 points for the flex wing guys
and 974 points for the rigid wing guys. But, really, do we really care that
much?
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The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.
