On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 2:16:47 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 1:55:11 PM UTC-6, jfitch wrote:
My preference would be a steering turn at Marlette lake with a bottom of 10,200', which amounts to a 40:1 to the 8000' finish, and would keep most everyone from the temptation to try the water temperature in Lake Tahoe in pursuit of a win.

How big a radius would you need at Market Lake to keep the low guys from attempting to go straight to the back side of Martis Peak for a climb to get high enough to make the steering turn? 10-15 miles? If you set that radius would anybody risk going further west (hugging the outside of the steering turn radius) if they were below 10,200'? If it's 10,200' with a big radius do you have to hold 10,200' everywhere within the radius? The gets you to about 1 mile from the finish.

An alternate approach might be a 10,500' finish height with a 15 mile radius, though I expect that might create it's own challenges. That would let you finish on the east side of Mt Rose and land at Carson.

9B

The steering turn needn't be very big at all. There is the possibility of tree topping Brockway, then climbing out and going back to Marlette, but it's a long way back, would require a pretty good climb likely near Mt Rose, and you'd be unlikely to win anything doing that. You'd be adding about 35 uncredited miles to your distance. I'd go for a 2-3 mile radius, and you merely have to enter above the floor. That would keep someone from ridge soaring up into it, though the days that you could do that are very rare. On days when you could thermal directly off of Martis, get back to Marlette at 10..2 and back again, you would have been much better off getting 1000' higher at Seigel or Freel, and flying home. It isn't perfect, a very risk tolerant pilot might ridge soar the Elevator, squeak Brockway, happen to hit one of those days when the Martis valley is working better than anywhere else, go back and get the turnpoint when everyone else baled to Carson. That's going to be a rare day. I'm pretty familiar with this run, done it maybe 50 times? 100 times? not sure but a lot. I'd also have a penalty down to 9200', and a landout below that. The rational is that it is difficult to predict the sink over the Carson valley sometimes.

Steve - yes I have a distaste for off field landings. I don't like repairing gliders or flying repaired gliders. I've hung around the repair facility enough to see the effects of off field landings. Those guys love them - good for business. A nice grassy farm field is one thing, where I fly you rarely see those, if you do there is probably an airport nearby. The area we routinely fly over is about 20,000 square miles. It is not practical to research potential landing sites over that area, and they change dramatically from year to year. I have a hard time accepting that crashing is part of flying. Maybe we should require that anyone posting include their total repair bill for the last 10 years in the first line. That might put some perspective on the opinions .

I try to keep the possibility of an off field landing at an unknown site a remote possibility. And of course my glider has a starter button as a backup plan . When I sell it, I'd like to be able to claim N.D.H.