Do you have a
glider? Do you have a logger? Do you have the
itch to fly beyond the gliderport? Then come
on out and play with us.
After some early season discussion and planning,
several of us would like to propose a friendly
soaring challenge to members of the Caesar
Creek Soaring Club. This isn't a race, it
is a continuing contest, and it emphasizes
distance, not speed. To make things as simple
as possible, the rules and format are minimized.
You can fly whenever you want. You can fly
any task you want to fly, as long as it is
less than six turnpoints. And you can fly
as many tasks as you want. Record your flight
with a logger (preferred) or at least with
a GPS that will produce a track log. Your
distance flown will be handicapped according
to your glider, and you will be given a score
for that flight. Throughout the length of
the contest, flight scores will be totaled
to produce a cumulative score. We'll keep
track of both best flight scores and highest
total scores, and post them on a scoreboard.
Your objective is to move up the ladder.
Why are we doing this? Well, first and foremost,
to have fun. If a better objective than that
is wanted, well, it is to encourage us to
stretch our wings a little, try to get better
at cross country flying. (A side benefit
is that it might make selecting flight of
the year a little easier, too.)
This isn't as rigorous as a normal glider
race, it is flexible in terms of format and
schedule. (How can you be more flexible than
fly what you want, when you want to?) We
aren't going to have rules like "no communication
except for safety purposes", so it doesn't
exclude team work, assistance, or mentoring.
You can fly for a badge, or to steal the
trophy, or, heck, you can even organize a
race with your friends, and still enter the
flight in the contest. Just fly.
We're planning to keep track of two classes
of pilots, Gold, for those pilots who have
completed the Gold Distance requirements
at the start of a contest period, and Silver,
for those pilots who haven't. For this year,
the contest period starts now, and runs to
Dec 31. Next year, it will be for 2005.
Smart guys are going to be wondering "Which
fool got stuck with scoring this mess" Good
question, and scoring hung up this idea for
a long time. But Pat DeNaples found a volunteer
- AeroKurier (das magazine fur den Segelfluger).
AeroKurier sponsors an international contest:
The online contest will score, record, and
post ANY flight log that it receives from
a registered member. Records are kept on
a daily basis, by member, by club, by nation,
region, you name it.
To try this out, I entered the contest as
an individual, and I entered CCSC as a club,
so you don't have to. Just be sure to register
as a member of the club. Then I uploaded
the log of my flight on Saturday. (You can
check it out, just go to Saturday 5 June
on the United States page. Or go to the Club
Scoring page and then look up Caesar Creek
Soaring Club.)
I used SeeYou software, and it was easy,
but ANY software that can produce a valid
igc file should work. It appears that Garmin
traces can be scored, numerically, and the
scores are posted, but don't count towards
online contest results. That shouldn't affect
OUR contest though, we can let SeeYou do
the scoring, and keep our own records. That
means virtually EVERYONE flying a glider
out of CCSC can participate. (I have an old
Garmin GPS III laying around somewhere, if
you need one, I'll let you borrow it. Any
other contributors)
All of CCSC is represented by my single
flight, so our club now ranks 921 out of
the 947 glider clubs participating worldwide,
41 out of 43 in the US. If this affront to
our honor galls you, well, all the more reason
to participate.
The onlinecontest.org site contains all
of the rules for scoring, but they are simple.
Check them out. Pat DeNaples has provided
a tutorial on registering for and participating
in the AeroKurier online contest, which is
attached to this email. But the site is pretty
intuitive.
