Armchair CD U.S. Sports Class Nats

I am a relatively new competition pilot with only one Regional (Perry
2006) and one National (1-26 Championships) level contest behind me.
The only sailplane I own so far is a Blanik L-13 in which I spend
every weekend and most weeks training the pilots who are the future of
our sport. I run a gliderport because I love this sport, but were it
not for the goodness of people like Mitch Hudson and Kevin Anderson
who have given me the use of their sailplanes I would not be able to
do any cross country soaring or racing for myself, thus eventually
losing the enthusiasm and love of the sport which keeps me going while
working in the trenches running a commercial operation and all that it
entails.

Aside from the two contests which I've actually flown I have made a
point to study every contest that I can in order to learn how best to
run the contests which I manage. I've towed, attended and studied many
contest and recently finished up managing the 2007 World Class
Nationals and 1-26 Championships. So, with that said then I will
respond to Mitch's question (before the rock-throwing began) and state
my observations from the first two contest days.

1) Day 1 - I ferried the towplane through strong lift the last hour
before reaching Caeser Creek. - The first sniffer was launched half an
hour after I landed, and there was a 3 hour task called.
2) Day 2 - Cu's showed up in the sky at 11:30. I launched the first
sniffer an hour later, and by the time I'd landed he was reporting 7
knot lift and an altitude of 7000'. There was a 3.5 hour task called.

According to the rules copied below, it sounds to me that the CD is
expected to make full use of the available soaring weather and 3 hours
should really be considered a minimum. I'm thinking the first two days
at least were under-called. (Wasn't on site for Days 3-6, so I don't
know about that.)

This is CD McQuigg's first Nationals as a CD, so I guess we all need
to learn the job. I look forward to seeing him push these guys hard
enough to separate the men from the boys.

Sarah

10.3.1.1 † Task Parameters
· † Standard Minimum Task Distance: 50 miles
· † Standard Minimum Task Time: 3.0 hours
· Standard Task Time: 4.0 hours

10.3.1.3 Normal Task - Tasks should make as full use of
the available soaring weather as is practical. When feasible, tasks
should be set so that the expected minimum completion time is not
less
than the Standard Task Time. Yet a task should be short enough that a
pilot who starts as soon as the task opens and who achieves 75% of
the
expected winning speed is able to finish. A time-limited task should
normally allow a maximum possible distance at least 130% of that
achievable in the designated minimum time at the expected winning
speed.

10.3.1.5 Maximum Task - Tasks should be set such that
the total time on course of the highest-scoring flights on any two
consecutive days is less than 10 hours. But, consistent with this and
as conditions allow, it is appropriate for the CD to set occasional
tasks that are substantially longer than the Standard Task Time.

On Jun 16, 10:10 am, Mitch wrote:
From looking at the sports class nationals scores, And seeing that

their have been only THREE landouts in four days of a 42 glider
NATIONALS, I'm thinking CD McQuigg is not pushing his troops hard
enough at this huge contest. I have heard that he is an ultra-
conservative CD, which is fine for a regional. I am of the opinion,
however, that with a spot on the team at stake that there be a bit
more separation of the scores. What do you folks think?

Oh, by the way anyone willing to take that thankless job of CD has my
undying respect, so before you jackals flame the crud out of me,
realize I'm trying to get some interesting discussion going on here as
"The Beatles sent my father to Hell" and "My air conditioner ate my
brother" are just not what I'm looking for when I come to this group.

-EX

It's a few days after this first post, and resulting intemperate
remarks.
I would observe the following:
After 7 days, my average distance per day is very close to 200 miles.
Time in the air about 4 1/ 2 -5 hr per day.
It is true that launching is being done only after sniffer reports
good lift. On a couple days the sniffer required relights so it has
not always
been an hour os so late as implied by some.
As to point speads MItch is looking for, after 5 days only about 100
points seperated the top 4 or 5 and these guys had yet to even fly
together.
Why? Good uniform weather and close pilot skills. If we flew 5 hr
tasks , the results would be little, if any different. Where the
spread would show would be in the middle of the score sheet and down.
Not where the champion or the team is selected.
I think maybe Mitch is sorta off base, but he has a right to voice his
opinion without abuse.
I hope we get to see him come race with us and maybe his view would be
refined a bit.
Cheers UH

On Jun 19, 3:11 pm, wrote:
On Jun 16, 10:10 wrote:





From looking at the sports class nationals scores, And seeing that

their have been only THREE landouts in four days of a 42 glider
NATIONALS, I'm thinking CD McQuigg is not pushing his troops hard
enough at this huge contest. I have heard that he is an ultra-
conservative CD, which is fine for a regional. I am of the opinion,
however, that with a spot on the team at stake that there be a bit
more separation of the scores. What do you folks think?

Oh, by the way anyone willing to take that thankless job of CD has my
undying respect, so before you jackals flame the crud out of me,
realize I'm trying to get some interesting discussion going on here as
"The Beatles sent my father to Hell" and "My air conditioner ate my
brother" are just not what I'm looking for when I come to this group.

-EX

It is quite obviuos that you have little or no contest experience as a
glider pilot. It is very bold of you to announce that Andy McQuigg is
an easy or conservative CD! This is my second nationals, and having
much more competition experience than you I reserve the right to call
you out on your accusations against the CD. If you think that you
know so much about national soaring competitions then I invite you to
soar with us and see how you do. I doubt that you will finish in the
top half of the score sheet. If you could even find the start
cylinder! When your Discus was at Perry I noticed that the gelcoat
was flaking off, I am not sure that it is airworthy and neither are
you! Oh and imagine that.... someone else was flying the Discus also,
not you!

972
p.s
I know of a glider refinishing businness that would do you and your
glider wonders.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Geesch, Mitch, I heard a rumor you were behaving rudely, so I've come
back into this den of weekend warriors, to see what was descending
upon you. Well, I came, I read, and all I can say is carry on Mitch,
and thanks to you and your mom for all the years of dedication and
contribution to soaring.
And having said that, like crap down the laundry chute, I'm gone! Tah,
Tah.

I think Mitch has asked a very interesting question. Now that the
Sports Class Nats are over, there were 49 landouts, give or take(by my
unscientific count -- correct me if I'm grossly wrong here), just a
few more than the 4 than Mitch was initially discussing. At the 2006
Standards in Uvalde (CD Charlie Spratt) there was only 1 landout.
From a surface view, it seems that the consistency of the weather is a
bigger factor in determining the number of landouts than the CD. The
weather in Uvalde was remarkably consistent, whereas it seems that it
got very difficult towards the end of the Sports contests.

As I'm headed to Italy shortly to fly in the junior championships, I
had hoped that a few people who have flown contests both domestically
and internationally would weigh in on this issue. I've been wondering
what to expect, and if my experience in US contests has prepared me
for European contests.

While I'm interested to hear what people have to say, I can't leave
this post with out commenting on the unfortunate posts of Kevin and
Corey. As a fellow member of the junior community, I was disappointed
to read inappropriate and not well thought out posts from you both.
As potential members of the '09 junior team, I had expected more of
you. As many people have stated, Mitch is a valuable member of the
soaring community and has been a champion of juniors throughout the
years. I too have benefited from his generosity -- in fact a great
deal of my experiences/successes can be in one way or another
attributed directly to him, or from people I have met through him.
His question was merely intended to generate conversation on the
differences between US and international tasks, and if we are really
preparing our pilots for competition on the international front.
Belittling responses full of personal attacks and name calling are
merely childish. In the future, please think carefully before you
throw stones. Doing so does nothing for the soaring community,
especially the juniors, or for the opinions others have of you.

Kathy Fosha

Mitch

I am sorry this reply to your inquiry / commentary regarding task length at
the 2007 Sports Class Nationals, just concluded at Caesar Creek, is being
sent so late. But I seldom read RAS, as I intensely dislike the invective,
such as you received, that seems to pollute much of the discussions on this
group.

And even if I were inclined to read RAS regularly, I have been pretty busy
running the contest over the last two weeks. So this response would not have
come out much sooner than this in any case.

But your reasoned comments do deserve a reply. Here come my two cents plus.

The CD and CM have many responsibilities, one of which is the soundness of
the competition, but the foremost of which is safety. So, first, you need
to understand Caesar Creek. Relatively speaking, we have a small flying
facility. Our field is not symmetric, the west end of the gliderport is
less than half as wide (280 ft) as the east end. (600 ft +). West end
operations are in general, similar to east end operations. There is a
take-off / towplane runway, which is the north side and is the full length
of the field. (just under 300 ft.) And there is a glider landing lane,
which is the south side of the field and is approximately half the length of
the main runway. (Of course, gliders may land anywhere they need to, but
our preferred mode of operations is glider/tow take offs on the main, glider
landings on the short, parallel glider runway. And there is no physical
separation north/south, left/right, we just try to operate as described.
When possible, we land towplanes "downwind", or head to head with the tow
out operation takeoffs. (Obviously, we do not take off into a landing
towplane.) When not possible, usually due to too high tailwind, we land
the towplanes in the same direction as takeoffs.

To land towplanes in the same direction as the takeoffs, with 42 gliders on
the grid, the towplanes had to approach as if they were landing in the
glider/relight lanes, and then shift over to the north. Otherwise, they
would be dragging ropes over the grid. While this is safe and not a problem
it would get more complicated if there were gliders approaching or actually
landing in the relight area. The solution is to not allow towplanes to
overfly the relight area unless it is clear. This can be done easily
enough, but doing so does slow the pace of the launch. And this is not
speculation, we know this from experience.

To deal with these issues, CD Andy McQuigg and I agreed that if feasible, we
would not start launching gliders from the west end of the field until the
sniffers actual performance verified that the gliders could stay up. This
was not an absolute, this was an operational objective - we would, if we
could, delay launching until we were confident that most of the competitors
could stay up. Is this in the spirit of the rules? That depends. It could
limit the length of the soaring day, but it does clearly comply with the
intent of rule 9.0. But this was not just the right course for safety, it
also meant that once we started, we would be able to run a fast pace launch
with fewer interruptions. Perhaps we were a bit conservative in this call,
but we did, in fact, have rapid launches and all the fleet got into the air
together.

We did have some late starting days. The cool air that gave us the fine
soaring took a little longer to warm up. And CCSC is near the western edge
of the Eastern time zone - sunwise, we are closer to Central time than
Eastern time. (So a 1230 EDT launch is really more like an 1130 sun time
launch. Of course, this implies you can fly later in the day, but that
didn't seem to work out.)

In an earlier response to your commentary, Sarah Kelly noted that she flew
through lift on the first day on her way to Caesar Creek, and arrived to
find we were not yet launching. Well, that is a true statement, but we were
in fact waiting for her to arrive to start the launch, as we wanted to go
with five towplanes instead of four. Also, it did not surprise me to read
that she was flying through lift, as she was coming from the southeast, and
the terrain to the southeast of CCSC is considerably more rolling than it is
at CCSC. We commonly see cu popping to the southeast before they pop
overhead. We can't get to them, but we can watch them. Very frustrating.

Other responses include comments on the aspects of TATs and MATs with large
turn areas that allow pilots to make in-flight decisions that maximize their
ability to get home, I won't expand on those comments. I do not think Andy
was trying to develop "get them home tasks", but I do think lots of
competitors opted to fly "get home" distances within those tasks. Given the
points differential between completing a task and not completing a task,
they really had no choice. And many of the competitors also had no assigned
crew, and I am sure that had to have some impact on their decision making.

In the end, over 8 competition days, the 42 competitors flew over 56,000
miles. That is an average task of 166 miles. And that is ALL thermal
soaring, no ridges or mountains.

So, I think CD McQuigg did a good job of using most of the soaring day,
balancing that objective with the other objectives the CD and CM are
supposed to meet..

Dick Holzwarth

Contest Manager - 2007 Sports Class Nationals.

"Mitch" wrote in message
oups.com...
From looking at the sports class nationals scores, And seeing that
their have been only THREE landouts in four days of a 42 glider
NATIONALS, I'm thinking CD McQuigg is not pushing his troops hard
enough at this huge contest. I have heard that he is an ultra-
conservative CD, which is fine for a regional. I am of the opinion,
however, that with a spot on the team at stake that there be a bit
more separation of the scores. What do you folks think?

Oh, by the way anyone willing to take that thankless job of CD has my
undying respect, so before you jackals flame the crud out of me,
realize I'm trying to get some interesting discussion going on here as
"The Beatles sent my father to Hell" and "My air conditioner ate my
brother" are just not what I'm looking for when I come to this group.

-EX

On Jun 25, 4:46 pm, Kathy wrote:
...
As I'm headed to Italy shortly to fly in the junior championships, I
had hoped that a few people who have flown contests both domestically
and internationally would weigh in on this issue. I've been wondering
what to expect, and if my experience in US contests has prepared me
for European contests.
...

Kathy Fosha

I haven't flown any contests but have followed them more or less
closely over the last few years. The last Junior Worlds in Hus Bos in
the UK saw 7 ATs between 159km & 372km and 2 TATs of the 2:30 - 3:00
variety (the last day's TAT was canceled) in the Standard Class. The
ATs where done by the winner in between 1:43h (159km) for the shortest
AT and 4:04h (372km) and 4:13h (348km) for the longest ATs. More
details he http://www.worldgliding2005.com

At the last Club Class Worlds in Vinion in Southern France they had,
IIRC, some 9 ATs between 291km and 499km and some 5 ATs between 1:30h
and 2:45h (apparently on the weaker days). The quickest AT was 315km
in 2:48h, the longest AT 499km in 5:25h by the respective winner. Two
more ATs took more than 4h by the winner, all results were achieved in
Standard Cirrus/Standard Libelle/Standard Jantar or similar. More
details he http://www.wgc2006.fr

I would say that on a halfway decent day at a Club Class Worlds you
would expect a 300 - 350km task that'll take you around 3 hours. That
compares to a US Sports Class National. However, a booming day will
get you 400 - 500km and flight times that will be well in excess of
5h, something that is probably not done at a US Sports Class National.
The other key difference I can see is that you are more likely to fly
ATs, the TATs that are so popular in the US seem to be used less at
Worlds, MATs (or whatever the FAI equivalent is) are not common at
all.

Also keep in mind that the last Club Class Worlds were flown over the
Southern French Alps, a mountain area that very often sees rapid
changes in conditions in a very small time/space frame and as such can
present very demanding flying conditions that are hard to compare to
e.g. Ohio. The upcoming Junior Worlds will probably be similarly
demanding even though the mountains are not as high as in the Southern
French Alps.

My two cents,

Markus Graeber

Regarding the post that I put up last week. I foolishly posted hearsay
regarding CD McQuigg's experience level. Below is copied email I
received from Mr. Clyde Taylor, the usual Contest Manager in Cordele,
GA. As I publicly cast doubt on Andy's experience as a Nationals CD, I
publicly offer my apology for posting ill-researched "facts". - Sarah
Kelly


From Clyde Talor:
With regard to your posting on RAS, I preface this reply with the fact
that I was Contest Manager at Cordele during the period 1991 thru
2006, that being my last year. I have known Andy McQuigg for more
than 20 years. He has CDed the annual contest at Cordele for 10-12 of
those years. Among those meets were the 1997 Standard Class
Nationals, the 2003 Open and 18-Meter Class Nationals, and a small
PW-5 Nationals one year. We will receive sanction approval soon for
both the 2008 Standard Class Nationals and the 2009 15M Nationals at
Cordele, with Andy as CD, of course. Andy is highly-experienced in
Southeastern soaring and as a CD, and your statement about his level
of experience and ability is, to me, a personal slight to him.
Indeed, given the vagaries of the weather, there have been numerous
years, including 1997, where, but for his expertise, dedication, and
persistence, there might not have been a successful contest at all.
It would be well for you to check your facts before posting this type
of misinformation on RAS.