On Jul 25, 8:09*pm, Andy wrote:

To me all of this adds up to a need to do a lot of homework when going
to fly at a place like Logan. *If the conditions are strong you likely
have enough margin to mask many of the challenges, but when you are
among, rather than above, the mountains you need to take care.

It's a beautiful place with a great airport and a supportive
community. I'd go again - I've already made a big investment in
learning about how to fly there.


As someone who flew Logan both last year and this year, I wanted to
add a couple of things to Andy's thoughtful post:

My big takeaway from the contest (at least during the Regionals week)
was that Logan was a more challenging place to fly this year than
"normal". Mostly it was bad timing on the part of the weather Gods -
but there were a lot of things, including:
1) Weaker lift during a period of intense glider activity, especially
with folks who were keen to carry a lot of water and fly hard.
2) Somewhat lower lift heights than last year
3) A bad winter causing crops to be "behind schedule" in being
harvested, slightly reducing the landout options a bit
4) Contest organizers wanting to make sure that a very large field of
aircraft had enough time to get organized and ready. Coupled with the
late days this meant baking on the tarmac for 2 hours every day;
something that I think contributed to fatigue, concentration, and
frustration levels (especially after launch while crawling up the
ridge in groups).
5) A very large and diverse set of pilots, including a lot of people
who aren't used to mountain flying and didn't seem to be comfortable
with key aspects of such flying (including when to "change gears" to
fly conservatively, and planning ahead to ensure that you stop soaring
with enough altitude left to reach a landout field that may be a few
miles from your position).

I've got some minor quibbles (such as the backup tasking that others
have mentioned); but overall I think the contest staff did the best
they could, including many safety briefings, strategy tips, and "data-
dumps" by local experts gathered around big maps and slide-show
presentations. Scoring was handled very promptly and openly. Karl S
was a stern-but-reasonable CD while I was there. And although I had
some frustrating days myself, I *like* the fact that this was a
challenge (for both the Regional pilots and the Nats competitors). As
I've said befo in my opinion there's a big difference between a
"fun-fly" and a contest; especially when we're talking about National
Championships!

One last thing: I've seen and heard so much about the "unlandable"
terrain around Logan, on this message group and other places. I am
not trying to make a personal attack on those folks; but do people
talk the same way about Montague? Parowan? Or (most of) Nevada? How
about soaring in the Alps or New Zealand (which most pilots talk about
whilst drooling)? It seems to me that anywhere you fly there are
going to be unlandable areas. I was taught that part of soaring is
learning to either avoid those areas, or to cease soaring and deviate
to landable terrain when you get below a safe altitude. As long as
proper judgement is used, unlandable terrain isn't necessarily
_unsafe_ terrain. And while I have full sympathy and respect for the
pilots who damaged their gliders, I'd like to point out that it wasn't
the youngest pilots or least-experienced contestants at Logan who got
into trouble - so its not like baby lambs were being led to slaughter
(I consider myself one of those baby lambs, since this was just my 5th
contest and I only have ~300 hrs in gliders). OK, OK, I'll get off the
soap-box...

Hope to see you all at future contests!

--Noel