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Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 17th 14, 11:20 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
[email protected]
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

More on the nationals later in this post, let's give a quick update on how our OLC/XC event that ended a little over a week ago went. We had 65+ gliders show up from all over the USA and Canada and wow did we have fun! We flew over 100,000km during the week's time (that is 2.5 times around the world!) and many pilots had their best/longest/furthest flights with many flights over 750km.

We learned a lot over the week and received some great ideas and suggestions from the participants on how to make it even better in the future. We will work hard to make these large events go even smoother, be more fun with less work, have more local and xc instruction, improve the structure of gridding and launching, etc. Thanks everyone for their patience with some of our rough areas. We had 2 tow planes drop out during the event which caused for the need of that patience just mentioned.

We will write more about the event for the SSA magazine but we want to shout from the rooftops that this new OLC/XC camp concept seems to be a very popular format - especially with those who actually experience it. With other threads talking about contest participation dying, we filled up to the max allowable for an SSA sanctioned event and unfortunately had to even turn pilots away. Is this mic on? Is anyone listening?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v...48189232664 6

Many pilots like the idea of going to an organized event with daily weather briefings, pilot meetings, retrieve office, line crew, airport Notam'd closed, socials and dinners, professional photographers on mountain tops set to take our pictures, etc but they don't want to worry about where they show up on the ongoing score sheet. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of competition with daily awards going on with daily racing tasks and flying for the longest flights. Of course none of this could have been possible without a huge group of volunteers from the Utah Soaring Association and from our amazing CD Ron Gleason.

Don't get me wrong - I personally love soaring contests too! In fact, we are doing one in Nephi in 2 weeks from now just a month after the end of our OLC/XC Camp. Yes we are insane! There is still room left to join us. http://www.ssa.org/MyHome.asp?mbr=7749575376&cid=2268 Why would you want to? To practice for the 2016 15-meter, Open and Standard Class Nationals that were all just awarded to Nephi!

See you in a few weeks,
Bruno Vassel - B4
  #2  
Old July 18th 14, 01:17 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Boise Pilot
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

Bruno,
You, your staff, volunteers and the city did a great job. Thanks for a great week.
One Idaho



On Thursday, July 17, 2014 4:20:53 PM UTC-6, wrote:
More on the nationals later in this post, let's give a quick update on how our OLC/XC event that ended a little over a week ago went. We had 65+ gliders show up from all over the USA and Canada and wow did we have fun! We flew over 100,000km during the week's time (that is 2.5 times around the world!) and many pilots had their best/longest/furthest flights with many flights over 750km.



We learned a lot over the week and received some great ideas and suggestions from the participants on how to make it even better in the future. We will work hard to make these large events go even smoother, be more fun with less work, have more local and xc instruction, improve the structure of gridding and launching, etc. Thanks everyone for their patience with some of our rough areas. We had 2 tow planes drop out during the event which caused for the need of that patience just mentioned.



We will write more about the event for the SSA magazine but we want to shout from the rooftops that this new OLC/XC camp concept seems to be a very popular format - especially with those who actually experience it. With other threads talking about contest participation dying, we filled up to the max allowable for an SSA sanctioned event and unfortunately had to even turn pilots away. Is this mic on? Is anyone listening?



https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v...48189232664 6



Many pilots like the idea of going to an organized event with daily weather briefings, pilot meetings, retrieve office, line crew, airport Notam'd closed, socials and dinners, professional photographers on mountain tops set to take our pictures, etc but they don't want to worry about where they show up on the ongoing score sheet. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of competition with daily awards going on with daily racing tasks and flying for the longest flights. Of course none of this could have been possible without a huge group of volunteers from the Utah Soaring Association and from our amazing CD Ron Gleason.



Don't get me wrong - I personally love soaring contests too! In fact, we are doing one in Nephi in 2 weeks from now just a month after the end of our OLC/XC Camp. Yes we are insane! There is still room left to join us. http://www.ssa.org/MyHome.asp?mbr=7749575376&cid=2268 Why would you want to? To practice for the 2016 15-meter, Open and Standard Class Nationals that were all just awarded to Nephi!



See you in a few weeks,

Bruno Vassel - B4


  #3  
Old July 18th 14, 01:24 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

Nice work Bruno and Nephi team!

Yes the mic is working just fine. You get some specific mentions in other threads too. It would be great to understand many of the specific details of how Nephi is structured so that it could be emulated/adapted elsewhere and integrated into the broader development plans for Soaring, XC and Racing in the US. It would appear that Nephi OLC may be partly substituting for Sports Nationals as an outlet for some folks to get their group flying fix but also brings out people who may not have participated in organized soaring events very much at all. The who and the why of all of that could be very useful to understand.

A CEO of a well-known company once told me he saw his job as "figuring out what's working and ways to get people to do more of it". Good advice for the SSA.
  #4  
Old July 19th 14, 09:02 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Ramy[_2_]
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

I have to admit I was concerned at first due to the high number of participants, but this turned out to be not much of a factor thanks to the organization, airport layout, and making Flarm mandatory. There was plenty of space to tiedown all the gliders, as well as for staging and griding. Those of us who wanted to launch early could do so everyday. And thanks to Powerflarm, there were no close calls and near misses as far as I know. It never felt too crowded and I was never surprised by any glider that PF did not alert me first, and it was eye opening to see more than 10 targets on Flarm simultaneously yet only be able to visually see couple of them. So much for using eyes for be able to see and avoid. Also the collision alarm only sounded when needed, which was a good testimony for how well PF handles gaggles.
Although the soaring conditions were not as ideal as the prior week would have been, and it went from too dry to too wet too quick, it still provided great soaring with long flights in all directions, as far as Ely to the west, Parowan and beyond to the south, Wyoming to the north and Colorado to the east.
The evening hangar gatherings and dinners were great, and even the morning briefings were entertaining.
Thanks to Bruno, Ron and the rest of the crew, the tow pilots and the line boys for a great event.
I'll be back!

Ramy
  #5  
Old July 19th 14, 02:57 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
son_of_flubber
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

On Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:20:53 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Many pilots like the idea of going to an organized event with daily weather briefings, pilot meetings, retrieve office, line crew, airport Notam'd closed, socials and dinners, professional photographers on mountain tops set to take our pictures, etc but they don't want to worry about where they show up on the ongoing score sheet.


Bravo. That's for me.
  #6  
Old July 19th 14, 04:59 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Dan Marotta
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

Flarm is still not for me *_where I normally fly_*, however having flown
in Parowan (before Flarm existed) I would love to come up to Nephi one
of these days. I would be happy to get a rental unit for that trip!

Dan Marotta

On 7/19/2014 7:57 AM, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:20:53 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Many pilots like the idea of going to an organized event with daily weather briefings, pilot meetings, retrieve office, line crew, airport Notam'd closed, socials and dinners, professional photographers on mountain tops set to take our pictures, etc but they don't want to worry about where they show up on the ongoing score sheet.

Bravo. That's for me.



  #7  
Old July 19th 14, 06:06 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Retting
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

Congratulations on a great contest this year. Bruno are you able to report if the Nationals you write of are "Pending" or have they been "Approved"? The Status is what I am referring to.
Words by anyone in the SSA mean nothing until "Approved" has been Officially issued.
So....Approved or Pending?
R
  #8  
Old July 19th 14, 11:48 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Frank Whiteley
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

On Saturday, July 19, 2014 11:06:40 AM UTC-6, Retting wrote:
Congratulations on a great contest this year. Bruno are you able to report if the Nationals you write of are "Pending" or have they been "Approved"? The Status is what I am referring to.

Words by anyone in the SSA mean nothing until "Approved" has been Officially issued.

So....Approved or Pending?

R

The next item of business was approval of the 2015 contests as presented by Vice Chair Sorenson. The proposed sites for 2015 a

18-Meter/Open/Club Hobbs, New Mexico

Previously approved 2015 sites a

15-Meter/Standard Elmira, New York
Sports Waynesville, Ohio

Umphres moved to approve the 2015 contest site, seconded by Sorenson and unanimously approved.

The next item was approval of 2016 contest sites. The proposed sites a

18-Meter Bermuda High Soaring, South Carolina
Club Wurtsboro, New York
Open/15-Meter/Standard Nephi, Utah
Sports Minden had requested this, but no paperwork had been submitted. Hobbs intends to bid on it.

Umphres moved, Whiteley seconded to approve the recommended contest sites, except for the Sports Class. The motion was approved with Chairman Maleady abstaining.

  #9  
Old July 20th 14, 02:48 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Retting
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

Thank you Mr. Whiteley for the information. Bruno...pop the cork...Racer Erik Nelson had posted a few words on OLC marveling at the beauty of Nephi and I shall add this contest to my bucket list. Two years seems too long to wait. A big thanks to the contest organizers for placing the bid.
R
  #10  
Old July 20th 14, 02:16 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
joesimmers[_2_]
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Default Nephi Was Just Awarded 3 Upcoming Nationals!

First off, all the staff and everyone that volunteered at this event deserve a lot of respect and thanks for without their contribution this event would not have been possible.

Ron Gleason, this guy is mild mannered, very well spoken, he made himself available 24-7 to pilots, he was always there if there was just the smallest problem he fixed it immediately every time. He obviously has tons of experience
running contests and it shows!

When the weather finally turned on at Nephi we were all in for a treat, when it is good here it is some extremely high quality mountain flying that rivals Minden and other top sites in the US and the world.

Once I got to know the area I was pleasantly surprised by the number of airports, also all of the beautiful landable valleys in the middle of the rugged mountains.

Many areas have large amounts of landable agricultural fields, but normally you would not need them since you are likely within glide of a nice airport anyways.

While the flying rivals Minden, the landing options are much better at Nephi so they are well suited to beginning xc pilots and pilots new to mountain flying.

I liked that those of us that wanted to be at the front of the grid were able to easily to do everyday, I was actually surprised it was the same small group at the front everyday and the majority of the pilots would pick spots further back that suited them.

The majority of the guys in the front of the grid were ex hangglider pilots I thought this was really cool as I myself switched over from hanggliders 15 years ago.

Talking to people I would guess that 25% or more of the pilots at Nephi had some hanggliding experience in their past!

Ramy who did the first 100k, yes a hangglider pilot!

The social aspect of this meet was outstanding, there were no egos, everyone was very considerate and helpful to others. It was a great mix of personalities that blended together very well hopefully this made it enjoyable to all.

The only cons I have to say about this event, were that I talked to several people who were disappointed that there were no lectures or classroom time spent on xc flying, there were also no mentors assigned to those who never flew here or were new to xc flying. There was only one classroom scheduled on xc during the event and it was cancelled for some reason at the last minute.

I am sure the organizers have had feedback about this and I am certain it will be fixed at the next event, this was a big learning situation for the organizers of course.

Thanks Bruno, Ron, and everyone else who made this happen!

Joe Simmers "EZ"
 




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