Bill Daniels wrote:

Bruce

One way to describe agressiveness is that a conservative pilot will fly M=2
on a 4 knot day and an agressive pilot may fly M=8 on a 4 knot day. With
flight analysis programs feeding NMEA data to PDA glide software you can
determine the McCready setting the pilot is using. I see a lot of very
successful pilots flying aggressively that way. These guys succeed because
they're very good at finding their next source of lift.

An interesting observation. My experience with flying in regional and
national contests around the country is different: the best pilots don't
cruise much faster than the mediocre pilots, but gain their speed from a
better choice of where to fly (more lift, less sink), and are much more
selective about the thermals they take. The mediocre pilot takes that 4
knot thermal Bill mentions, but the good pilot waits for (and finds) the
6 knot thermal.

Another way the good pilot gets that high cross-country speed is by
staying out of trouble, mostly by recognizing a poor situation ahead in
time to handle it easily. The mediocre pilot isn't aware of the problem
as early.

Note that I'm using "good" and "mediocre" instead of "aggressive" and
"conservative". A good pilot can fly much faster than a mediocre pilot
and still be flying more conservatively.

Bill, how do you tell what MC setting a pilot is using from looking at a
flight trace? Perhaps you meant "a fairly steady cruise speed equivalent
to an MC setting of ..."? The good pilots I've flown with don't follow
an MC setting, but cruise at a fairly constant speed.


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
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