On Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 8:51:52 AM UTC-8, XC wrote:
John and Richard,

I do remember my cross country skills improved greatly when I was mentored at home by W3. I quickly found that by following him around the course I stopped making my own decisions and I got nothing out of it. We then went to a system where we started together for fun, soon split off to follow our own decisions and raced around the course. Comparing my decisions to a seasoned pilot at the end of the day is very useful and much more gratifying.

I go to contests to do the same thing - put up my best effort against the other pilots at the contest and compare the results in the end. I enjoy this very much. I recommend flying your own flight to anyone who enjoys getting better.

XC

True - or mostly true. I learn a bit every time from observing another pilot's decision-making. I think it's important to make your own decisions and observe when others make different ones - what did they see? - what was their reasoning? - did I have a better idea? Sometimes you learn more by going your own way and playing your hunch out, seeing what happens down course, sometimes you learn more by making the mental note that you'd have done it differently, that it was probably not as good a choice and staying together for the next decision. The important point is to always be thinking about what you think you should be doing next. You can't learn with your brain turned off - plus it's super annoying to the people with their brains turned on.

9B