Well said Eric!

Paul Remde

"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
news:QxYRg.3547$Vk4.1710@trnddc01...
Yuliy Gerchikov wrote:
"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
news:0b4Rg.694$Vk4.425@trnddc01...
Ramy wrote:
Well, SeeYou shows the sunset time, so I guess this is what Doug is
using.
Paul, your suggetion will work for short to medium or yoyo tasks when
one can plan to land way before sunset or can abort the task. But this
does not work for long O&R and triangle tasks, especially in the great
basin, where weaker conditions on course can slow you down
significantly. When this happens there are only two choices, to fly
back home and potentially land after sunset, or landout in the middle
of nowhere before sunset, hope you don't break anything, then spend a
freezing night in the cockpit waiting for your retrieve.
We'd all choose to fly home, but we don't have to post that flight on
the OLC. Doug isn't suggesting you do something stupid to get some OLC
points, but he is asking you don't post flights that clearly go beyond
sunset.

And the only lasting result of it is that the rest of us don't get to see
those flights and don't learn from their analysis.

Those few flights that aren't posted because they appear to blatantly
violate US FARs can be be posted in many different glider forums, or put
on a website somewhere, if they are so important to our enjoyment and
understanding. Since it's the posting of the flights that interests you,
and not the contest aspect, you or like-minded pilots could set up a
repository for them. It should be a lot simpler to set up than the OLC,
since there aren't any rules to check or files to verify.

And for what higher purpose do we have to give up this once wonderful
resource?

As for the "once wonderful resource" being lost, I'm still enjoying the
OLC just as much. It's called the OnLine Contest, not "What-I-did forum"
where you post whatever you like, so I'm thinking the higher purpose is
preserving the contest aspect of the OLC.

I am a bit disturbed at the implication that people who willingly or
unwittingly break FARs so obviously it shows on their flight file are
people we should be learning from.

--
Note: email address new as of 9/4/2006
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org