On Jan 18, 10:34*am, Scott Alexander
wrote:

Anyone want to chime in on some good contest strategies or tactics?

Get a copy of Condor soaring simulator (www.condorsoaring.com) and
start flying some races (Monday Night Soaring 7 &10pm ET Mondays -
friendly to first-timers)

Figure out how to connect your regular flying PDA to Condor. Condor
outputs GPGGA, GPRMC, and LXWP0 sentences to a COMM port, and most if
not all soaring PDA programs accept these by default. You may need a
USB-to-serial adaptor for this.

Design some short AAT and/or MAT races in Condor and fly them using
your actual PDA. You'll be surprised how hard it is to make the PDA
work for you instead of against you, and this is something you do not
want to discover in an actual contest.

IMHO Condor is by far the best way to prepare for cross-country
racing, as opposed to cross-country flying.

TA