On Wednesday, March 29, 2017 at 2:59:53 PM UTC+3, Sean Fidler wrote:
Day 3 winners interview: https://youtu.be/puh0a8e1Ja0

Day 3 results: http://www.sgp.aero/usa2017/results-sgp/results.aspx

Day 3 sea breeze front approach: https://youtu.be/iCv96cypwq0

Day 2 task: click "show details" on the daily results page

Overall results: http://www.sgp.aero/usa2017/results-sgp/results.aspx

FAI SGP USA 🇺🇸 Website: http://www.sgp.aero/usa2017.aspx

FAI SGP USA 🇺🇸 YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/faisailplanegp

FAI SGP USA 🇺🇸 Flickr photos: http://www.sgp.aero/usa2017/race-cov...ontestID=28476

FAI SGP USA 🇺🇸 Facebook page: @FAISailplaneGrandPrixUSA

The weather here in Florida continues to be absolutely superb! Yesterdays FAI SGP USA task consisted of a 440km assigned racing task and the winners speed was 110 kph. Climbs ranged from 4-6+ knots with ample cumulus. There were several large holes to contend with during the 3rd task. The first was a 50 km mile glide heading into TP4 Umatilla. Then a strong gulf sea breeze front lined up most of the way to TP 5 Williston but the marine air had already fully engulfed the turnpoint by the time the leaders arrived. (See video above). The SGP pilots had to negotiate a 30km glide out to the turn point in the blue, then back to the clouds. This required significant deviation. There was also a large hole going into TP6 Cub Haven which forced the lead pack (XG, ZO and 1C) to get a little lower than ideal and this slowed them down considerably allowing several to pass on the leg to the final steering turn. 7T, 711 and 98 deviated to the W to hit a strong sea breeze driven Cu and got to final glide before the turnpoint allowing for an 80 km final glide at MC 4. Congrats to Sean 7T, Tom 711 and Pete 98 for rounding out the top 3.

Nice one!

I guess you've got much better instrumentation now. Back when I was doing the odd contest all I had was a GPS that would tell the distance to the next TP. Before launch I'd annotate the task sheet with the required height at each of the last few TPs in order to final glide home at 22:1 and 33:1 L/Ds (150 and 100 ft/km) -- and know what speed/MC will give those glide angles.. 33:1 was basically my MC=0 in the PW5, but in a better glider I suppose I'd add a 41:1 80 ft/km as a near enough MC=0. Then it was pretty easy to take the GPS distance to the next TP, calculate height required to reach it, add the precalculated height to get home from that TP, and know if you were on final glide home around those 1 or 2 or whatever turnpoints (seldom more than that, of course).

Seemed to work pretty well, with minimal mental load.

When I flew right seat as a "passenger" with a friend doing night freight delivery in a small turboprop it was interesting that they did similar mental calculations, though simpler, with just one fixed glide angle, calculated as either 300 ft per n mile, or 3 miles per thousand feet (whichever was easiest at the time -- both are near enough). So if you were cruising at 15000 ft you'd start your descent at 45 (3 mi/1kft) - 50 (300 ft/mi) miles on the DME. And the rate of descent is five times your speed e.g. at 500 fpm at 100 knots, 800 fpm at 160 knots (it was our usual until 5 mi out on finals). Pretty easy to cross check the DME and altitude from time to time to see how you're doing, long before hitting the ILS (if there was one -- a lot were just VOR/DME). One place only had 2 NDBs positioned at different distances on final, which meant you needed to hit set altitudes crossing each NDB.