Mitch

I am sorry this reply to your inquiry / commentary regarding task length at
the 2007 Sports Class Nationals, just concluded at Caesar Creek, is being
sent so late. But I seldom read RAS, as I intensely dislike the invective,
such as you received, that seems to pollute much of the discussions on this
group.

And even if I were inclined to read RAS regularly, I have been pretty busy
running the contest over the last two weeks. So this response would not have
come out much sooner than this in any case.

But your reasoned comments do deserve a reply. Here come my two cents plus.

The CD and CM have many responsibilities, one of which is the soundness of
the competition, but the foremost of which is safety. So, first, you need
to understand Caesar Creek. Relatively speaking, we have a small flying
facility. Our field is not symmetric, the west end of the gliderport is
less than half as wide (280 ft) as the east end. (600 ft +). West end
operations are in general, similar to east end operations. There is a
take-off / towplane runway, which is the north side and is the full length
of the field. (just under 300 ft.) And there is a glider landing lane,
which is the south side of the field and is approximately half the length of
the main runway. (Of course, gliders may land anywhere they need to, but
our preferred mode of operations is glider/tow take offs on the main, glider
landings on the short, parallel glider runway. And there is no physical
separation north/south, left/right, we just try to operate as described.
When possible, we land towplanes "downwind", or head to head with the tow
out operation takeoffs. (Obviously, we do not take off into a landing
towplane.) When not possible, usually due to too high tailwind, we land
the towplanes in the same direction as takeoffs.

To land towplanes in the same direction as the takeoffs, with 42 gliders on
the grid, the towplanes had to approach as if they were landing in the
glider/relight lanes, and then shift over to the north. Otherwise, they
would be dragging ropes over the grid. While this is safe and not a problem
it would get more complicated if there were gliders approaching or actually
landing in the relight area. The solution is to not allow towplanes to
overfly the relight area unless it is clear. This can be done easily
enough, but doing so does slow the pace of the launch. And this is not
speculation, we know this from experience.

To deal with these issues, CD Andy McQuigg and I agreed that if feasible, we
would not start launching gliders from the west end of the field until the
sniffers actual performance verified that the gliders could stay up. This
was not an absolute, this was an operational objective - we would, if we
could, delay launching until we were confident that most of the competitors
could stay up. Is this in the spirit of the rules? That depends. It could
limit the length of the soaring day, but it does clearly comply with the
intent of rule 9.0. But this was not just the right course for safety, it
also meant that once we started, we would be able to run a fast pace launch
with fewer interruptions. Perhaps we were a bit conservative in this call,
but we did, in fact, have rapid launches and all the fleet got into the air
together.

We did have some late starting days. The cool air that gave us the fine
soaring took a little longer to warm up. And CCSC is near the western edge
of the Eastern time zone - sunwise, we are closer to Central time than
Eastern time. (So a 1230 EDT launch is really more like an 1130 sun time
launch. Of course, this implies you can fly later in the day, but that
didn't seem to work out.)

In an earlier response to your commentary, Sarah Kelly noted that she flew
through lift on the first day on her way to Caesar Creek, and arrived to
find we were not yet launching. Well, that is a true statement, but we were
in fact waiting for her to arrive to start the launch, as we wanted to go
with five towplanes instead of four. Also, it did not surprise me to read
that she was flying through lift, as she was coming from the southeast, and
the terrain to the southeast of CCSC is considerably more rolling than it is
at CCSC. We commonly see cu popping to the southeast before they pop
overhead. We can't get to them, but we can watch them. Very frustrating.

Other responses include comments on the aspects of TATs and MATs with large
turn areas that allow pilots to make in-flight decisions that maximize their
ability to get home, I won't expand on those comments. I do not think Andy
was trying to develop "get them home tasks", but I do think lots of
competitors opted to fly "get home" distances within those tasks. Given the
points differential between completing a task and not completing a task,
they really had no choice. And many of the competitors also had no assigned
crew, and I am sure that had to have some impact on their decision making.

In the end, over 8 competition days, the 42 competitors flew over 56,000
miles. That is an average task of 166 miles. And that is ALL thermal
soaring, no ridges or mountains.

So, I think CD McQuigg did a good job of using most of the soaring day,
balancing that objective with the other objectives the CD and CM are
supposed to meet..

Dick Holzwarth

Contest Manager - 2007 Sports Class Nationals.

"Mitch" wrote in message
oups.com...
From looking at the sports class nationals scores, And seeing that
their have been only THREE landouts in four days of a 42 glider
NATIONALS, I'm thinking CD McQuigg is not pushing his troops hard
enough at this huge contest. I have heard that he is an ultra-
conservative CD, which is fine for a regional. I am of the opinion,
however, that with a spot on the team at stake that there be a bit
more separation of the scores. What do you folks think?

Oh, by the way anyone willing to take that thankless job of CD has my
undying respect, so before you jackals flame the crud out of me,
realize I'm trying to get some interesting discussion going on here as
"The Beatles sent my father to Hell" and "My air conditioner ate my
brother" are just not what I'm looking for when I come to this group.

-EX