Forget Dying; Is Soaring Dead?

I agree with Frank...to some degree...the OLC is not
racing...

1.) You don't drive 1, 2, 3 days to a location
2.) You don't sit in the rain for 1, 2, 3, 4 days(see
most recent race results)
3.) Your parachute may not have been repacked in the
last year, heaven forebid.
4.) You may not have to shanghai a crew for a week
at some garden spot of the western US.
5.) You may not have to burn up all your vacation
time for one event.
6.) You don't get to spend years in the bottom of
the pack.

Wait a minute...this is not diatribe on anti-racing...racers
are some of the most enthusiastic of our sport, they
are the ones who the manufacturers create new gliders
for...they are to be admired for their dedication and
zeal. But there is a reason that 95% of us do not
race.

The OLC has really been able to help many of us sate
our competitive urge without the sacrifice required
of traditional racing. We can fly on good days, we
can compare our tracks to the hot pilots who also fly
on the those days...how fast interthermal, how often
stopping and for how long, where did they find the
best lift, etc, etc. We can use the OLC as the gateway
to organized racing, for those who desire that route.
And so far the OLC has resisted that all-so-prevalant
glider disease of trying to make things more complex.

So is it a substitute for racing....heck no.




At 15:18 29 August 2006, Frank Whiteley wrote:
The OLC is not a real substitute for racing, but I
would like to see a
glider type filter, just to see how others flying the
same make/model
are doing.

Frank Whiteley

HoUdini wrote:
As a pilot just getting interested in contest flying
I found posting to
OLC to be an easy next step. I wouldn't be surprised
if much of the
past newbee contest cannon fodder (like myself) is
detouring away from
the 'traditional' contest format. If newbees used
to show up just to
stretch themselves, isn't OLC a good substitute?

If this is a trend, then why should it be resisted?
Is there a way to
merge the two? Should OLC evolve into the scoring
program for all
contests/badges? Perhaps after a few years of OLC,
maybe I'll be more
interested in traditional contests...or will OLC/SeeYou
evolve in that
same period of time and keep me captive?

Every day is a contest day to me and technology change
tends to leave
the 'traditionalists' behind. My bet is OLC will
evolve faster than
traditional contests can respond to the challenge.

Folks, it's a real 'game changer'. How it will change
us, both good
and bad, is still to be seen.

LT





Eric Greenwell wrote:

For me - no. Contest flying (lets call it 'racing')
and the OLC are such
different experiences, one can not subsitute for
the other. In the air,
racing with other gliders, especially on assigned
tasks, is quite
different from flying by myself. There is also the
ground side, with all
the competitors gathered in one place at the same
time for the race,
flying the same tasks, so you have a shared experience
that you don't
get in the OLC.

While the competition aspects of the OLC are interesting,
it's not
exciting like a race, at least for me; interesting,
but not exciting. I
really like to see what others are doing and how
differet areas of the
country and the world work for soaring pilots, so
I do follow the postings.

I don't seriously compete in the OLC, but I do post
all my flights.
Serious competition would involve carefully planning
a course for each
day to best fit the OLC task rules, along the lines
of Badge and record
tasking. While I enjoy these kinds of flights, the
experience is still
very different than a race, and I don't plan my flights
to optimize my
OLC score.

So, perhaps someone that's never raced a sailplane
might think the OLC
was a substitute for racing, but I don't, and I'm
guessing most pilots
that have raced wouldn't, either.

--


www.motorglider.org - Download 'A Guide to Self-launching
Sailplane
Operation'

wrote:
Chip I think you meant to ask "Is Contest flying dead " .

Not if some effort is put into promoting contests and making them
interesting, inexpensive and especially for the younger folks new to
contest flying, easy to participate in .


My 2 cents worth .

Ron (ZA).

I agree. I've been running the Governor's Cup in Region II for (gasp)
10 years as of this season. In each of the last 5 years we've had
anywhere from 25 to 45 participants, about the same as a well-attended
regional. It's a middle ground between a regional (everyone at the
same airport flying the same task) and the OLC (nobody at the same
airport flying anywhere). The former has its drawbacks in terms of
cost, logistics, etc. while the latter is not really a competition in
the sense that you can't compare a flight in the California mountains
with a flight in eastern Ohio.

Competitions like the Governor's Cup which require folks to fly in the
same general area on a racing task give you a chance to get some sense
of how you stack up against other pilots in a (reasonably) realistic
racing setting. By picking a task area that includes several
gliderports, it's possible to create either assigned tasks, MATS, or
AATs which are fair to everyone. Looking at a map, I can see many
places in the world where this is possible - the UK and Germany just
for instance; any place that has a reasonable density of gliding sites
will work. All it takes is a few clubs to get together and set up
standard tasks that can be accessed from each of the respective
airfields.

So, it may be that the fully centralized contest appeals to a limited
number of people, while the completely decentralized contest may not be
"racing" in the traditional sense. But, there is certainly a middle
ground that deserves to be further explored and promoted.

http://home.netcom.com/~pappa3/

Erik Mann
LS8-18 (P3)

I agree with Erik: the Governor's Cup and similar competitions are a
middle ground between traditional centralized (i.e., one location)
contests and the OLC. In one sense, they're the best of both worlds:
more pilots fly the course on any given day precisely because they
don't have to meet in some common location but can launch from their
own gliderports. Yet, though the courses are assigned area tasks with a
wide range of distances, everyone flies in roughly the same geography,
unlike the OLC.

It's the next best thing to the head-to-head competition many of us
enjoy at the regional and national level. And it's excellent practice
for those, getting us out on course in the kind of less-than-perfect
weather in which contests are often won or lost, albeit at the price of
the occasional landout (although, since most of the G Cup turnpoints
are active glider operations offering a tow, falling down part way
around is sometimes no more traumatic--ignoring the scoring
implications--than pulling into a gas station to fill up the family
car).

But given the title of my original posting, I'll close by noting that
Governor's Cup participation this year looks to be down at least 25%
from last year in number of pilots (from nearly 50 in 2005 to the low
30s this year). Issues cited by others such as increasing numbers of
contests vying for the same fixed number of pilots and the long
distances and vacation time demanded by, say, a nationals on the other
side of the country don't seem to apply here. Soaring, or at least
competitive soaring--would anyone have responded to my posting if I'd
more narrowly defined my subject? --does seem to be in rapid
decline.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"