Bill Daniels wrote:
"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
...

Bill Daniels wrote:

If you haven't noticed, the 2006 OLC season is already underway. Tom

Knauff

and the Ridge Soaring Irregulars have taken an early lead in the
international club standings. I'm guessing they plan to keep it if they
can. The rest of you guys need to get going.

Of course, we are thinking about it, but it's a cyclical thing: thermals
are over for the Northern hemisphere, but the Allegheny ridge running
isn't. Soon the Southern hemisphere will light up with good weather,
then in March it's back to the Northern hemisphere. Somewhere in there,
the Argentina Connection will give us some flights to ooh and aah over,
and late in our Winter season, I'm betting Kempton I. and Gordon B. will
enthrall us with a few good flights, too.

In fact, I'm looking forward to the Gordon v. Kempton "Extreme Soaring"
matches even more than the Argentina venues, in part because they'll fly
in my country, and because I know them both (Kempton more, because he
flies the same model glider I do, and Gordon less, because I've only met
him once).

For us here in Washington State, our hopes lie on downwind dashes from
wave, an unexplored idea here. It's not clear we can connect with the
next waves, as they are 90-110 nm away. Also unexplored is long wave
flights south along the Oregon Cascade Mountains, most likely leaving
from Hood River, Oregon.

We had an exceptional soaring season in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon,
Washington) this year, as you can see by the Seattle Glider Council's
placing in the OLC 2005 club standings, so we are optimistic this will
also be an exceptional wave year.

The clear vision panels are installed, the oximeter batteries renewed,
oxygen bottle topped off, and the warm coveralls pulled out of storage.
I'm ready!

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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA


The Minden guys will probably give the Ridge Soaring guys a run for their
money as soon as the Sierra Wave kicks up but others have a good shot too.

The Albuquerque Soaring Club has wave and year 'round thermals. They used
that fabulous weather to garner (No pun, Chip) first place for the US this
year. Howie Banks appears to have the ability to 'warp space' and instantly
jump to places hundreds of miles away - at least judging from his May 16th
trace. (Or was that an alien abduction?) The Soaring Society of Boulder
has a humongous wave and a lot of aggressive pilots.

A couple of years ago I flew 3 hours in 10,000 foot thermals at Warner
Springs, CA on December 27th. Heck, today I coached a 3-hour student
through an hour of thermal soaring at Boulder, CO.

Watch the OLC. This is serious competition. Winter is no excuse.

Well, darn it, it is for us! And, actually, for a lot of pilots, because
the days are short, short, short, which makes long flights much less
likely. Long thermal flights are simply out of the question (2 or 3
thermals does not a soaring day make), and long wave flights have
several constraints besides the short day: it's cold, which often means
(here, at least) more and lower clouds that won't even let us up to
18,000 feet, plus cold that can be punishing, again below 18,000', much
less the altitudes Gordon likes to use; and it's winter (did I mention
that?), which often means snow on the ground (outlandings get very
awkward), and cold, which means surviving after a successful outlanding
could be difficult.

We might be able to do some long distances on our ridges, but a 4 mile
ridge means the OLC would have to change their scoring to about 100 legs
per flight...

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Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA