Top 20 XC Soaring Sites in the US

I think you're missing a few points. Here's an example: Harris Hill is an extraordinary historical repository for glider pilots. The weather is sometimes dodgy... but what's more fun, doing 200 miles on a day when no one else goes cross country, or doing 300 miles on a day when everyone else does 500?

The area is really safe because it's filled with airports. The weather is challenging, leading to a learning experience on every flight. The takeoff over a cliff is breathtaking. And when you land, you're surrounded by great camaraderie, amazing history, and a really beautiful landscape.

So... don't just look at the numbers. There's more to gliding than just distance.

Very interesting. And all the whining on here confirms a well known fact - glider pilots who are stuck inside for the winter are a bunch of grumpy grinches. Let's hope spring gets here soon! In the meantime, come join us for some our year round flying in Houston Texas. Ha!

Frank that was a lot of work. I wonder if results would change if only top 3 scorers were used instead of entire club? But then I guess that would be crunching 270 x 3, or 3 times the work.

Casey, I suspect that would change the results, but more work than I'd want to do.
I do encourage others to try different analyses and let us know the results.

Nice analysis. There's no perfect metric, but you certainly tagged some decent ones - lots of miles logged, lots of long flights, high average flight distance. Yes, there are remote soaring sites where you can have a nice time flying not as far or as reliably, or with as many other pilots around, but mostly reliable weather to fly long distances with other soaring pilots seem like decent criteria to first approximation. As a comparison, you might consider taking out OLC flights flown during contests or OLC camps, just to see what the normal organic XC flying looks like when there aren't events being hosted. You could also sort purely by average OLC distance to pick out the hidden gems - but I'm nit-picking.

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