Getting started in the OLC League this weekend

If you're referring to ASA, your home has been moved to Maricopa.

If you are flying with a nomad club, you will have to pick the airfield
that gives you the best soaring during the OLC League season.

You can also change your club affiliation to claim your flights with
the local club wherever you are.

If you want to set up local clubs for the airfields where you will fly,
get them in to olcatssadotorg by tomorrow.

wrote:
Are clubs like mine that have no home base out of luck? (We're flying
out of two or three locations this year. Maybe more ...)

-Homeless in AZ

Yes. But the OLC has a solution!

Call yourselves a different club at each location.

The OLC thinks you'll be happy about it and won't feel it makes it not
worth entering the OLC League.

Enjoy the comp.

GC

Hmm, according to the web site the OLC goal is to encourage XC flying.
Staying within a conservative glide from home is not considered cross
country and defeat the purpose of the OLC IMHO.

Ramy

Doug Haluza wrote:
We now have well over 100 clubs set up and ready to compete in the OLC
League in the US. So now it's time to work on how to get started in the
competition. It may take a while for clubs to catch on, so the early
adopters will have a big advantage. As long as one club member scores
on one day of the weekend, your club will score a minimum of 1 point
for the round. But if only 20 other clubs score, you will score a
minimum of 30 points for the round. So it pays to get started early.

To score you will need to get at least 50 handicapped points in 2.5
hours using only 4 legs. If you are flying in a SGS 1-26 or 2-33, or
any other glider with a handicap less than 64, the required distance is
less than 20 miles. Since you get 4 legs, each leg only has to be 5
miles long.

So the simple strategy is to pick a turnpoint 5 miles upwind, climb up
over the home airfield, then head out to the turnpoint, always staying
above a safe glide back to home. Round the turnpoint, and fly home.
Climb back up and do it again. Then, and this is important, climb back
up to to your start altitude. If you did this in less than 2.5 hours,
congratulations, your flight qualifies for the OLC League.

So let's say you want to maintain a conservative 10:1 glide to home.
Then, at 5 miles out, you only have to be 0.5 miles higer than pattern
altitude, or around 3500' AGL. This should be doable on a decent
soaring day in most places. Remember that you are working upwind, so
the tailwind provides an extra safety factor.

Of course if you are flying a higher performance glider, you will have
to go a little further, but you can see that this is doable in any
glider on a good day almost anywhere. All you need to do is carry an
FAI approved logger to claim your flight.

Naturally you should only attempt this if you have landable terrain
upwind, just in case. If you can make your turnpoint an airport, that's
even better. You also want to have the basic skills for X/C flight. The
Bronze Badge program is an excellent introduction to X/C, and this
basic OLC League task should be suitable for anyone who has properly
earned this award.

This task is also an excellent opportunity for dual instruction in X/C
procedures. It creates a goal-oriented traning situation, which is an
excellent learining opportunity. And if the goal is completed, it
creates an instant trophy in the form of an OLC claim for all to see.
Plus it can be done in any two place trainer, with minimal chance of an
actual off field landing.

So it's time to start thinking about how to get your club started in
the OLC League competition. It doesn't require anything special, other
than the logger. So start thinking about how to how to get your club
involved. The competition starts this weeked!

Ramy, everyone needs to start somewhere. This post only encourages
people to start small. Obviously as clubs and their pilots get more
experience, they will fly further and faster and score higher. So I
disagree with your concluson that starting off within gliding distance
of home is not encouraging XC flying. I think the purpose of the OLC is
to allow everyone to compete at their level. It truly is the people's
contest.

Doug Haluza wrote:
We now have well over 100 clubs set up and ready to compete in the OLC

Where did you find this information?

Under the League rules section, it states that OLC will publish a list
of clubs/home airfields, but for the life of me I can't find it.

It is linked off the OLC News page:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olcphp/...c=olc-i&spr=en

The US list is he

http://www.onlinecontest.org/download/club_US.html

You only have until tomorrow to request changes at olcatssadotorg

Partial results from Round 1 of the OLC League are now up at the OLC
Server. For the SSA-OLC go to
http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/OLC.htm and click on the
"OLC-League" button in the header. Only 9 US clubs scored on Saturday,
so there are lots of points still up for grabs if you can score on
Sunday. See older postings in this thread on how to score points for
your club.

One minor correction to the above. The maximum score per round is 50
points, or 2 points per club scoring if less than 25 score. So if only
20 clubs score, the max score is 40 points, and the minimum would be 22
points, not 30.