Edited cockpit video of COMPLETE TASK at 2012 Region 4 North Contest(Mid Atlantic Soaring Association)

On Saturday, January 19, 2013 5:29:28 PM UTC-5, Andrzej Kobus wrote:



Correction: Single TURN MAT task, is that even a task?

It is, and one I'd only use in rare situations. This was one of those. Here's the setup:

- It's mid-October in Pennsylvania. The day dies pretty reliably by around 5PM or a little later/earlier depending on how much heating we manage to get.
- A slowish-moving front is a couple of hours late clearing. Unsoarable at 12:30 and again at 1:00. Clearing is from the NW to SE.
- Your fleet consists of a mix of pilots ranging from Striedieck, Seymour, Litt, Leslie to a few guys (including your camera man) who have never flown a ridge task.
- The wind forecast is on the cusp of being too northerly for safe ridge, though the experts can certainly make it work. But, a flatland task is hopeless; the clearing is in the direction of ridge country.
- The two sniffers finally start to stick at around 1:30, though one of them is threatening to land out not long after his positive report.
- I've resorted to sending up the towplane to scout the NW quadrant (favorable report of clearing, sun, and Cu).
- The fleet is launched by around 2:15, but we're going to be running up against the end of the day if I'm not careful.

Considering this is a regionals, the mix of pilot experience, and the other variables, I decided the safest thing to do was to get the guys to the ridge and let the fast guys show the way (which appears to be exactly what F2 did). A three turn MAT was certainly an option, but what if the ridge was actually not working - do the rookies know enough to give up on the ridge and will the day support the task? An AAT with two big circles could work, but it's easy to pick the wrong ridge if you haven't flow at Mifflin before. At least the first turnpoint puts you on the best ridge in the entire task area. An AT would certainly make it so that the 5 or 6 ridge guys win the day easily, but what if the day duys early and everyone is stranded?

There's a lot going on when the CD resorts to a 1 turnpoint MAT, and in my mind safety was big part of it. I was accused by one of my clubmemebers (who was not at the contest) of recklessly endangering the guys by calling a 1 TP MAT, but IMO it was the safest and fairest alternative on a day where the weather was giving us fits across several variables. As it turned out, the results mapped pretty closely to what I would have guessed (okay, Paynter the flatland chicken overachieved) on a ridge mission, and most of the fleet flew over 180 miles. Not too shabby for October in the Northeast.

P3