Ridge Flights April 24

The Aero Club Albatross crew out of Blairstown has definitely made a focused effort to continuously increase the size of legal FAI Triangles over the last 10 years. In the mid-2000s, 750K was considered a spectacular flight. Now, we are seeing at least a couple each year. 1000K was next, and Ryszard Krolikowski flew within about 0.5KM of a legal one a couple years back. Daniel's is the first completely legal 1000K triangle out of Blairstown.

The challenge is typically to meet the 25% rule without having to fly too far upwind or downwind of the ridge system. On a typical strong ridge day, slogging upwind for 100 miles, some of it over real tiger country, is not fun. So, designing tasks to maximize high speed running and minimize white knuckle stuff is the trick. Often, a mistake of only 5 miles in positioning a turnpoint can cost 30 minutes, which you can ill-afford when you are already trying to use most of the soaring day.

As far as the number of 1000K Triangles, all of the flights I was citing are triangles (some that 711 mentioned are not). At least 6-8 in the desert Southwest and probably an equal number out of the Appalachians. If I had to put a number on it, I'd guess "about 20" legal FAI Triangles of 1000K or greater.

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 7:37:33 AM UTC-4, Andy Blackburn wrote:

It was a little hard to tell from the flight tracker, partly because Blairstown appeared to be not at the northern turnpoint, but rather just short of it, but the flight looked to comply with the 28% rule for an FAI triangle. The curve of the ridges plus a few transitions make this work pretty well, so credit also for creative and effective task design. I know how hard it can be to get the FAI rules complied with.

It's not clear to me which of the other 1,000k flights referenced in this thread were FAI triangles. Great accomplishments regardless, but making the FAI proportions work represents an even greater challenge - especially on a ridge flight where it's so tempting to pick a flatter triangle and minimize the up/downwind transitions.

9B