Participating in Contests

The impression that the super pilots with full time organized ground
crews and $90k+ ships makes going to a contest with a older generation
glider say a HP-11 with ~36:1 glide rather futile and would perhaps
feel like a 2nd class pilot showing up with such a craft amoungst all
the expensive glass.

I hear you - until recently I primarily flew a Russia AC-4 and had
those same concerns. But you know what? An AC-4 took third place in
a Regionals last year - in a ship with a 31:1 glide-ratio!

I've seen snobbery among a few high-dollar glider folks, but so far
they've been a tiny minority - and you deal with those folks in all
sports... (don't get me started about my auto-racing experiences along
those lines!)

I think another good idea for first timers would be to have an
optional pre-contest orientation weekend where perhaps a month before
the contest you could go to the site with a number of others and fly
the area to get the lay of the land for us first timers.

I believe pretty much every Regional has at least 1 or 2 practice days
prior to the competition. Radio comms are allowed on the practice
days so you should be able to acquire the knowledge you want and learn
from the other pilots at the same time. There will always be some
"home-field advantage", but at least you won't be flying the first
day / task "blind".

they should just have a firstimers class with detailed
explanations of what to expect, what not to do, where not to go and
how to prepare for that particular site. Show us where the house
thermal are.

Some clubs do a yearly XC flying seminar and pair new pilots with
experienced pilots (often ones with race experience) - then send them
out on a moderate XC task. Having done one of those, I can say its
invaluable - even if its not strictly at a race. Also, there's
nothing stopping you from asking a local XC pilot to team-fly with you
some day. Sit down at the beginning of the day and pick a challenging-
but-achievable set of waypoints and then go fly!

Last year I flew XC and picked my path / waypoints by looking for good
clouds and scenic terrain. This summer, after doing a little team-
flying with experienced pilots, I developed a different approach. I
would decide on a couple of waypoints (or a specific direction of
flight) in the morning after studying the weather, and then I spent my
flight trying to hit those waypoints - or fly as far as I could in the
direction I picked prior to takeoff. I feel that having a defined
goal really sharpened my skills and will make me pretty comfortable
with an assigned task by the time I get to my first competition.

Also, since you can view charts online and customize Google Maps, you
should be able to talk to local pilots ahead of time and learn some of
the house thermals and "gotcha" areas. For example, here's a Google
Map that our local club near Seattle has marked up (check out all the
marked points and shaded areas you can click on for detailed info):

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en...,0.946198&z=10


equipment in older gliders. Perhaps allowing a PDA with GPS, or even a
simple hand held GPS unit to substitude as a turnpoint recorder would
help in this area.

This is allowed now in sports regionals.

Wow, really? That's awesome! I have a logger but allowing PDA or GPS
sources will probably enable me to convince 2 or maybe 3 extra pilots
to come to the Regionals in Ephrata next year! They wanna try a
competition, but don't wanna spend the $$ on loggers or other fancy
equipment that they don't need for their normal weekend flying. Ahh,
a little bit of knowledge goes a long way!

--Noel