On Dec 24, 8:57*am, Tuno wrote:
Merry Christmas, all!

Ba humbug! (I'm at my office staring at a motivational poster CH gave
me. It has Dilbert sitting in his cubicle, placed outdoors, and an
eagle way overhead dropping a load on him. The caption is "SOARING --
One more thing you're not doing right now!")

66 I think you will like new start-anywhere. I didn't get to use it at
Parowan but during the a few ASA contest flights earlier in the year
it provided some welcome flexibility inside the start cylinder.

My first preference was to start *when* I wanted to, out the side,
like in the previous rules. But when I was loitering about, killing
time between the task open and that ideal start time, and stumbled
into a butt thumper, I had the option of taking it out the top
instead.

I found it made for less stressful starts, and certainly less
stressful first legs, and less stress is a good thing. Just ask
Dilbert ...

.02NO

Interesting comments.

The one thing that happened a bunch of days at R9 in 2008 was that on
a northbound first leg you sometimes had to cover 35-40 miles over low
country where there was mostly 3-5 knot lift before you got to the
mountains where the lift was 7-10 knots. This meant a good thermal out
the top of the cylinder allowed you the range to get there without
having to do some combination of getting low and taking weak lift
along the way. That could easily save you 3-4 minutes right off the
bat - not to mention reduce your initial stress level. Start anywhere
just increases the probability that you'll be able to find that good
first climb inside the cylinder.

Under more uniform lift conditions if you don't get a climb out the
top, you just start out the side and head out - where you will either
connect to a decent climb on course or turn back for another start.
Under this scenario there isn't much difference between a climb-then-
glide and a glide-then climb strategy - except for the pucker factor.

9B