(Kirk Stant) wrote in message . com...
I'm simply amazed at all the people who complain that it is too hard
to get a silver badge! Gimme a break - Do the 5 hours in sight of the
field, fly out to a field 50km away and land there, then borrow a
logger (or even a barograph!), get your altitude, then if needed send
off the logger to get it calibrated.

That's hard?

Kirk,

Is 50Km hard? It depends. From KMEV in 12kts up to 9,000 AGL in a
40:1 glass bird - probably not. From an east coast field with 2kts up
to 4,000 AGL in a 23:1 club ship - yeah it's hard, especially for a
pilot who may never have been away from the home field in an aircraft
before.

But, I don't think anyone here is objecting to the challenge of the
flight itself. I think what really gets folks going is the
administrivia required to document this flight and, more importantly,
the high propensity for failure. I have no documented figures, but
in 20 years of soaring I would have to estimate that some 20% of
barograph recordings are no good for one reason or another. I've
seen everything from: forgot to wind the unit (duh) to paper peeled
away from drum (crap) to stylus got jammed against case due to the
hold down straps (ouch) to something moved and bumped the on/off
switch to off (doh). And that's just me! Just last week, a guy in
our club did a really great flight in his 1-26 that would have gotten
him Silver distance, except that he forgot to baseline the trace and
there was not a clear notch at his release from tow.

So, the real issue is that we have an opportunity to remove some of
the failure modes and do it using a piece of equipment that doesn't
need to be mailed into a calibration lab every year and can be
purchased at the local Walmart. I don't think anyone believes this
is the change that will radically alter the face of badge flying as we
know it, but it should help some people achieve that exciting first
"big badge" without being turned off by the administrative aspects.