Condor - ridge tasks

[David Reitter]

I've been flying some local Condor races with some of our club members, and we're thinking about trying a ridge task with the Mifflin scenery for a change.

My impression was that Condor didn't simulate ridge lift very well. When I flew Mifflin the last time, I had set a ridiculous 30-knot wind (blowing at the ridge), which of course causes other problems. Is there a trick to it?

At gliderracing.com, they seem to be doing ridge tasks regularly...

[Sean Fidler]

Couple points:

Dont set the wind too high. 10-15 kts is plenty. Youll get 110+ kts easily at this setting. In online competition we often do mifflin with 8kts to make it reasonable. Many of us are getting good enough to approach redline in 12 mph of wind at mifflin in condor.

Fly the ridge at or just above ridge top level. Getting cuaght even slighly below is considerably slower. Higher is also slower. Like real life but amplified.

The ASW27 is the fastest ship on handicap and potentially all around on the ridges. I would suggest having all pilots use the 27, full of water and with the cg aft 2.4 inches. 2.8 if you will be thermalling often.

If you have a slower PC, be aware of scenery re-renderings. The terrian can suddenly appear closer than it was in the previous terrian packet and you can instantly be in a ground or tree collision. 100 ft away from the ridge or more to be safe.

Have you group fly the mifflin task tonight on us nighly soaring, gliderracing.com. 30+ will be there as they are almost every night. Great fun!

[JP Stewart]

On USNS, mifflin is one of the most troublesome sceneries for ridge.
The tasks are often easy to complete but the balance of pushing too
hard and being conservative is very difficult. Tonight we are racing
mifflin, join us tonight at 9 eastern on US Nightly and you may get
some insight on it.

JP

[David Reitter]

On Thursday, March 8, 2012 10:18:43 AM UTC-5, Sean Fidler wrote:

> Have you group fly the mifflin task tonight on us nighly soaring, gliderracing.com. 30+ will be there as they are almost every night. Great fun!

Yay, talk about good timing. I forwarded your message, and I'll be there.

By the way, we're Pittsburgh Soaring Club and about three hours away from Mifflin County. Hence the interest.

DR
"LX9"

[soartech[_2_]]

> Have your group fly the Mifflin task tonight on U.S. Nightly Soaring at gliderracing.com. *30+ will be there as they are almost every night. *Great fun!

Thanks for pointing this out. It sounded like fun and I wanted to do
it as I recently have been flying with the Mifflin scenery.
I went to the website, signed up and NOWHERE on the site are there any
instructions. I guess it is a secret.
(Things like does the server setup the weather and the map or do you
have to?)
There is NO link to where the host server is located. An hour later I
got a reply from the site owner.
For anyone interested, the server location link is found on a totally
different website!
Here: http://www.condorsoaring.com/serverlist.php

[David Reitter]

On Thursday, March 8, 2012 10:48:36 AM UTC-5, JP Stewart wrote:

> On USNS, mifflin is one of the most troublesome sceneries for ridge.
> The tasks are often easy to complete but the balance of pushing too
> hard and being conservative is very difficult.

It was fun to fly the task last night. That was my first time on USNS (and I'm a relative Condor rookie as well). Getting used to the ASW28, full of water, I got off to a slow start, and got low on the ridge after TP1. Careful. I survived this, though, found a thermal, and made it upwind to TP2.. Getting back to Mifflin, however, was hard - an upwind transition to another ridge, into the blue. Two clouds en route failed to work. Should have backed off to a better ridge, but wanted to get home too soon. I ended up landing out some 20nm short of Mifflin. Oh well. 11/25, 414 pts, not too shabby given my inexperience, but a huge difference in XC speed to the experts. Just like in real life. Will try again some time soon. Great fun!