On 10 Mar 2004 21:35:29 -0800, (Mark James Boyd)
wrote:

In article ,
John wrote:
The point I was making was is there benefits for low-time pilots to
thermal right and land left?

This is a naive, but certainly not a stupid question.

If everyone did turn right (or left) in all thermals
(presumably at altitude) this at face value would seem to
reduce the chance of a midair, if both pilots can't
see each other for whatever reason.

It sometimes sort of works. There was an "only circle left within 10
km of the field" rule in force during my, so far, one and only
competition and in general it worked pretty well. However, on one task
I made a restart about 35 minutes later, by which time non-competition
flying had restarted. This traffic was not bound by such a rule, but
did raise a potential dilemma - do you obey the normal rule of
circling in the same direction the first guy in the thermal if he's
turning right and risk a DQ for not turning left within 10km or do you
look for another thermal and risk a time-consuming low save or even a
land-out near the field and a blown task?

Bottom line: such a rule cannot work unless its rigidly applied to all
traffic and I don't think this is either likely or sensible.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :