That's where the silver/gold five hour duration flight comes in! Or
do you want him to fly 50k and then loiter for an hour and 20 minutes?

I believe you misunderstood the proposal. It would be a *minimum* time,
not a maximum. In other words, doing your Silver distance in an hour would
not qualify, but doing it in three hours would.

I would tend to agree. I haven't done my Silver yet but I did an
unrecorded flight which would have qualified, in under two hours, in a
1-26. I see no reason why that shouldn't count!


Been there, done that, got the badge...and later flew over 5 hours for
diamond goal, in a 1-26. As it was pointed out, do you award "more
points" for doing it on a day that wasn't booming?? How do you
measure and enforce this?

I think the sensible thing to do would be to change the distance based on
the L/D of the glider flown. We already change it based on the release
altitude, so this wouldn't be too different. It does seem a bit unfair to
give someone a Silver badge for a 50km flight in an Antares (no offense
YO!) while requiring those same 50km for a 1-26.


The distances were arbitrarily chosen back when it took exceptional
skill in the best glider of the day to fly the tasks. I doubt weather
was considered much, especially if you consider that the original
silver/gold/diamond requirements were laid out long before mountain
wave was understood. So we would not shorten the distances for a
1-26, we'd LENGTHEN them for the 30+ ships.

However, I would rather leave the rules UNchanged, as I said earlier,
for the sake of tradition. And I am humble: my 1-26 is a stellar
performer compared to the ships that were used to fly the first
silver, gold and diamond flights. It's probably more comfortable,
too. So to honor my soaring ancestors, once I get that third diamond
in my 1-26, I'll start over -- and fly them with the open cockpit
attachments ("Sports Canopy").

-Pete
#309