-snip from Dave-

Perhaps you were absent when a pilot blew a final glide from

the North, and landed on a street in a housing development

close to the airport?


-snip from John -

As Dave said, one of our most safety minded pilots landed on a city street two miles out. A lot of the rest of us had no fun at all on a long wave suppressed liftless final glide -- and the huge incentive to squeak it in on the last day of a national.





I had to check the score sheet just to make sure I was there.

Link to score sheet on the ssa website http://www.ssa.org/ContestResults.as...ss+Nation als.

The top finisher in my class (15m) on the day did 79.4mph (~128kph), I was 8th with 75.18mph (~121kph). I was first to leave on task at 13:56 the last start time of a pilot who finished the task was at 14:54, he flew on task for almost 4 hours and finished with a speed of 63.57 mph (~102kph) - 15th on the day. Perhaps the day wasn't as bleak as you gentleman seem to remember. Yes, the day had it's challenges, but isn't that why we do this?

-snip from John-
Take a look down sometime while you glide in to Hobbs at Mc 0 + 50 feet,

No thanks, I'll try very hard not to put myself in that position again. I've had a few marginal MC 0 final glides before. I am not proud of them, each one means that I screwed up somewhere earlier in the flight, to add insult to injury I then demonstrated poor judgment by continuing on to the finish. These were not contest flights, there were no points on the table, no outside pressure, just pure stupidity on my part. I sincerely hope that the lessons have sunk in to my thick concrete skull by now.


Perhaps slightly off topic but:
-snip from John
-- huge incentive to squeak it in on the last day of a national.


Do you mean to imply that some pilots knew on July 3rd that July 4th would be called off due to logistical issues on the ground not directly related to the contest itself? To my knowledge all of the contestants thought that July 4th would be a contest day until the pilots meeting. Personally I was rigged, taped, watered up, and and on the grid before the meeting.


Cheers,
Luke Szczepaniak