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Turnpoint Database's Need Overhaul
On Aug 13, 9:59*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 8/13/2011 5:59 PM, Andy wrote: On Aug 6, 11:23 am, Scott wrote: I love this sport very much, and I would sure hate to see more accidents cause the participation rate to dwindle down even more. *Why don't we overhaul our turnpoint databases to improve safety??? There is no requirement for a turnpoint to be landable. *There is no requirement for a turnpoint database to include any landable sites. It would be nice, however, if contest organizers provided a separate landables database, particularly when holding a contest at a site where no one except locals knows where the landables are. It seems likely to me that Scott meant "waypoints" when he said "turnpoints", and was promoting landable waypoints be included in the waypoint database, not that all turnpoints actually be landable. "Waypoint" and "turnpoint" are often used interchangeably, but that's a real mistake when talking about contests. The problem with a "landables" database is that it needs to be maintained. *A strip that was landable 5 years ago may be full of motor homes and off road vehicles on the day you need it. Local knowledge is a huge advantage at any contest site and particularly at a new site. I'll quibble with this: local knowledge is usually much less valuable at flat land sites than in mountain sites or ridge sites. Nothing is going to change that. In the past, something did change that in a remarkable way: GPS receivers. They made navigating so easy, it was no longer a factor in contest flying. That kind of change is still possible. Google Earth lets you "fly" a contest area; Michael Reid's use of Google maps to document landing areas and lift sources could substantially reduce the effect of local knowledge, but not many sites have been documented. Condor and other simulators have the potential to train pilots to fly well at a new site, and I think that will be SOP for contest pilots in less than 5 years. Am I right, Frank? -- Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me) Eric, Yes, you are right. Condor's list of landscapes (aka Sceneries) is growing every day, and now already covers Parowan, Logan, and Uvalde, just to name a few. If I were a pilot planning to attend the 2012 WGC at Uvalde, I'd be flying previous years' contest tasks in the Uvalde task area over the winter. I flew about 20-30 hours in the Logan terrain before going there, and it helped a LOT. Regarding the use of landable fields/airports for contest databases, we overhauled the CCSC database about 5 years ago to do just that, However, as someone else pointed out, at least one of our landable airports was abandoned a couple of years after the overhaul, and is no longer landable. TA |
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