In the continued absence of any catastrophes, bad management, poor organisation or inclement weather to give me something to rant on about (today’s task was, again, close to perfect) I thought I’d write a quick few lines about the comp pilot’s nemesis.

The goal glide.

Take today, for example.  The task was 92km over varied and challenging terrain with many options to get things wrong along the way.  Except at this level most pilots don’t get things wrong so pretty much the whole field managed almost the entire task.  A very significant minority fell just short of goal, however.  When non-competing pilots look at the score sheets they must think “how on earth would they fly that far then bomb out within walking distance of the goal field and lose 500 points and very probably the competition?  Surely it can’t have been worth the few extra points they’d have got for being 30 seconds faster?”

This is a very logical and in many ways correct analysis of what looks like a very basic error except, as with many things involving flying, it’s not that simple.

On today’s task there were two gaggles forming as we neared the point at which we’d go on final glide.  The lead gaggle were struggling quite low and about 3km further on than my gaggle who’d got a very strong core and were at cloudbase 1000m higher.  ‘Great’ I thought as we remorselessly began to reel them in.  At this point the lead gaggle had a few options.  They could wait for a cycle to come through (perhaps a long time) and watch us lot go over their heads and wipe out 4 hours of hard work in the process, they could go for goal and hope they’d find a thermal on the way or hope we’d come unstuck and get a crappy glide so we’d, in turn, need to find more lift.

In the event it was a mixture of all three but if you look at today’s scores and see a lot of extremely good pilots just short of goal this is why – if they hadn’t have gone when they did there was every reason for them to expect the second gaggle would overtake them.  Nothing puts more pressure on a pilot to start final gliding than when they’ve been in the lead for hours and a load of upstarts are about to steal their well deserved win.  So they took the risk and about a third paid a high price as they were a few fields short.

As it happens our gaggle hit 6-metre sink just as the lead gaggle whizzed off and we ended up all struggling for a low save ourselves.  At this point the correct action to take is to realise that you’re not going to win the task and to take a safe glide.  Except, as ever, it doesn’t work this way.

At the top of my last climb I really needed another 50 metres of height to have a 10 to 1 downwind glide, which should have been comfortable.  And could I find it?  Not on your bloody Nelly.

On a day where we’d experienced climbs of up to 7 m/s in very regular and nicely spaced cores why was there not a sniff when I needed a paltry extra 50 metres to assure the glide?  Believe me if it was there I’d have taken it but as with the leaders who were being hunted down by the second gaggle we could all now see the third gaggle in turn hunting us down and were forced into exactly the same decision.

So I, and the 6 or 7 pilots with me, resorted to the age old technique of swearing at the sky and hoping for the best going on glide needing 11 to 1 for goal over boggy and sinky ground with power lines and trees on the run to the goal field.  5 were just short and me and an Advance glider made the goal line by 20 metres and had just enough room for a low-level turn into wind.

On such small strokes of luck ride the outcomes of competitions.

And now I’m going to bed as in only 9 hours I will be on the bus and on my way back up to launch for another workout with the Valle de Bravo Thermal Monster.

I get the feeling we are all going to be very, very tired by the time the comp finishes…

Mark H

Related posts:

• Stuck In The Middle With You
• High-altitude goals
• Highs and Lows
• Hang Gliding World Championship: The Americans are coming!
• British Paragliding Cup, Yorkshire Dales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 6:39 am and is filed under Mark Hayman Blog. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.