End of Season Sunset Warning for SSA-OLC Participants

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. Which one
would you pick?

Ramy

Paul Remde wrote:
Hi,

I have a crazy, wild suggestion.... Fly your task so that you land before
any known definition of sunset and you will never need to worry. That is
what most pilots do. Those that do not are not playing fair - in my
opinion.

Paul Remde


"Graeme Cant" gcantinter@tnodedotnet wrote in message
...
Paul Remde wrote:

I must respectfully disagree. If we just use sunset as the end of
soaring flight that gives an unfair advantage to a pilot that is far from
home or at altitude when the sun sets. He/she should have planned ahead
and landed on time.

And exactly which time would that be, Paul?

You seem to have lost track of the story so far:
Doug wants to be able to pick illegal flights on OLC but he's having
trouble deciding which flights are illegal because he doesn't know when
it's "sunset" (as 'un'defined in the FARs) at all the places OLC flights
go to. Last night two astronomers locked horns and are heading for the
jugular over when sunset might be.

Now read on:

I know this won't help but in Oz the rules a
1. "Night" is the period between the end of evening civil twilight and
the beginning of morning civil twilight.
2. CASA (FAA equivalent) publishes beginning and end of daylight graphs
for latitudes from 0 to 45 throughout the year.
3. Daylight flight occurs between those times after converting local time
to Standard/Daylight Time.

Note that daylight "ceases" at a particular longitude solely dependent on
its latitude. No allowance for terrain, etc.

But the following is also in the AIP:
"Users ... should note that the parameters used in compiling the ...
Graphs do not include the nature of the terrain ... other than a cloudless
sky and unlimited visibility ... Consequently, the presence of cloud
cover, poor visibility or high terrain to the west of an aerodrome will
cause daylight to end ... earlier than that extracted from the appropriate
graph.
Allowance should made for these factors when planning a flight..."

The rules are reasonable but are no help in maintaining a level playing
field for a gliding competition.

So, Doug. Make up your mind what arbitrary rule you would like to
implement for the SSA-OLC and publish it. Let's say - evening civil
twilight at the latitude.

Stop using the FAA as an excuse and a crutch. Stand on your own feet.
Make a rule. Publish it. Enforce it. Cop the flak.

GC