On Tuesday, June 18, 2013 9:36:25 AM UTC-4, JJ Sinclair wrote:
On Monday, June 17, 2013 11:32:22 AM UTC-7, JJ Sinclair wrote:

The last day at Montague was spectacular, probably the best soaring day I have ever seen! After flying 7 assigned turn-points in an 8-turn (3hr) MAT, I was 45 miles out with 3500' over MC-3 glide home and the SN-10 said I would be 4 minutes over the 3 hr minimum time. My stats page told me I was doing 70 mph so far after cruising 80 knots all day long.







Question: Is it faster to raise the MC to 4 or 5 and come home at 90'ish (monitoring time and altitude required), probably bringing my time remaining down to zero..............Or should I use my excess altitude to select another turn-point adding 10 more miles to the total distance and continue to cruise at 80 and be overtime about 13 minutes?







I did the latter and got 73.5 mph (236 miles), but I have a sneaking feeling I should have done the former.



JJ



In this case you are correct, but lets say my accumulated speed was lower but conditions appear to offer a faster leg if I decided to add another turn-point and by flying over the minimum time I would increase my overall speed. Not sure how to make this decision quickly other than a quick guess-t-estimate.

Cheers,

JJ

It's basically the same problem to solve when flying an area task: are you
flying fast enough to make up for diluting the contribution that final glide
makes to your speed? Keep in mind that you're getting a free segment of flight
from your start altitude down to your finish altitude, flown at your final
glide or interthermal speed. The longer the time you spend on course, where
average speed is less than that, the more you dilute that glide.

There are occasions where it makes sense to extend the flight (e.g. you spent a
long time digging out of a hole). More often, it hurts less than you think
to come in a little early. As John Good pointed out to me, don't just slow
up your final glide to use up those couple minutes you'll be early. You
actually get more points by flying faster.

Matt