On Friday, May 25, 2012 4:46:13 PM UTC+2, Bruno wrote:

I am going to sound biased since I live only 2 hours away from Logan
and fly there at least a few times per year. My main airport is Cedar
Valley just 25 miles south or Salt Lake City. There were a few very
loud detractors of Logan who were quite vocal with their complaints
last year. There were dozens of others who did not agree with their
statements and did speak up but were not as loud and passionate at
least when it comes to posting on the Internet. I personally can
witness that Logan was flown safe by over 90% of the crowd last year.
The remaining 10% decided to glide into more intimidating areas too
low breaking the cardinal rule not to glide out of distance from a
landable field. I was always within glide of a field the entire
contest. There were times I needed to stop and climb so I could
remain that way and watch a few pilots plow ahead lower than myself.
Wonder how they can then complain? My guess is most of the time they
scared themselves but actually still had a field they could have
gotten to if they looked around. I saw statements of flying over
unlandable terrain on days where tasks took them into areas that still
had fields - just not as many as they might have liked but there were
still plenty of landable fields out there. Logan is a great place,
with an amazing huge airport with lots of room for glider operations
but still with its own challenges (can sometimes require a higher tow
to get things going quicker) but it is a DAMN safe venue with amazing
scenery and soaring when the pilots do what they are supposed to and
don't go into wilderness areas too low. I am sure there were plenty
of times at Mifflin this year where pilots might have been pushing it
to stay within a safe glide of a field. Don't rule out Logan as a
fantastic soaring venue.

Stepping off the podium now.
Bruno - B4

First to Dieter:

I'm sure that the competition at Moriarity will be fun; I've actually already flown there. Most of my American soaring was flown in the desert southwest, so I'm quite familiar with the incredible soaring conditions that one can enjoy there! But, soaring thousands of feet ABOVE the mountains isn't the same as soaring THROUGH the mountains! It's a totally different kind of flying, altogether.

On to Bruno:

I agree with you completely, and I believe that you help make my point: Flying at a mountain site can be done safely, but one can't just jump in and expect to be safe. Proper guidance and experience is required, there are just too many unknown unknowns!

One must intimately know the land-out fields that are in the few and far between wilderness areas, and one must be intimately familiar with landing-out at high density altitudes. Maneuvering near the mountainsides and well below the mountain peaks requires an entirely different set of soaring skills, and that must be experienced first-hand.

I would love to see more mountain sites such as Logan succeed as racing venues in the USA. The mountains offer an entirely new level of challenges to the soaring pilot; that's perhaps why so many Europeans flock to the Alps! That's why I moved here!

Chris Fleming