Day 15 impressions?

Tomcat84 · Post by **Tomcat84** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 11:40 pm

For those that did fly... post away!

my own:

i think i made the right choice going for the far south flatland waypoints first. When i first got the mail with the waypoints i was planning to go west first into the wave to get lot of altitude, but when i got in game and noticed the ingame time was december -> early dark -> early thermals gone, i changed it around and went south first, using the thermals.

I think that was a good call cause at the end, for example JJJ, who had first gone to the wave, was forced to land out somewhere around Ljubljana when all the CU vanished, while i was still going up nicely in the wave!

At that point i also wasnt flying for speed anymore, it was just sweet hanging in the wave with the sun going down, i was quite enjoying myself actually!

Anyway, I arrived back home around the same time as WW, so we both got another tow and did some formation flying. We did a few loops, i took screenshots but it doesnt come across well, so here is two in level flight:

all in all, an interesting change.

btw i have no idea if i got all the turnpoints right... haha

LS 10 · Post by **LS 10** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 12:00 am

Hmm,
I can not "attach files in this forum"...
I would like to show you the last photo of my flight.
You might have some problems to see something (at least you have to turn off the lights of your room

)

Chris (HZ)

cruiser · Post by **cruiser** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 10:18 am

Yes, I did the mistake of going to the mountains/wave first. I didnt check what was the time of year so after only been left with turning the tp at NE, I landed out. With maybe another 100m of altitude, I would be able to get up on ridge lift. Oh well. Was interesting to turn points like this.

Tomcat84 · Post by **Tomcat84** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 10:28 am

cruiser wrote:I didnt check what was the time of year

i didnt either initially, but when i got in game and saw how low the sun was for 1 PM in the afternoon i decided it might be worth checking, and it was 25 december 05, haha

so then i turned my whole plan around

Cadfael · Post by **Cadfael** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:01 am

It was very interesting and unusual task - great idea. I also did a mistake and firstly flied to the mountain, so I finished on the southest point when thermal finished - outland.
The most unpleasant moment for me was in mountain (about Podkoren road) - I was flying about 20 minutes as a idiot between mountains and could not find a turnpoint - only mountains. I asked some near german pilots where point is, but I got answer only "why?". I hope that it was only problem in english communication, but I got very non - christmas mood from this moment and I have no more pleasure rest of flight...

Tomcat84 · Post by **Tomcat84** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:11 am

lol Cadfael, i had similar experience at some point. I was flying, not sure what the turnpoint was, so i asked X-ray, nothing in response!

then he asked me, can you find the turnpoint (or something like that i think), i said "no clue!" He said nothing back and a bit later he flew away, so i thought: "man that bastard! he knows where it is and just checks that i dont and then he flies off!"

it wasnt until about 30 minutes later while i was in the wave that i found out I had accidentally switched to 123.25 frequency god knows how long ago, so thats why no one said anything back haha

Cadfael · Post by **Cadfael** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:21 am

We was on correct frequency and could communicate...
I only supposed, that during a special task it will be more about cooperation.. I must say, that also during a real race if I see anybody in troubles without possibility of safety land I am trying help him...

sinker · Post by **sinker** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 1:04 am

Cadfael wrote:We was on correct frequency and could communicate...
I only supposed, that during a special task it will be more about cooperation.. I must say, that also during a real race if I see anybody in troubles without possibility of safety land I am trying help him...

Yes ... I saw this rude reply "why?" that you got. Cadfael - I also prefer co-operative play - and that is what we mostly see ... don't worry about occasional selfish person.

I set off with the crowd but immediately got into big trouble

trying photo the first point (east of lake) and lost loads of height ... lucked on a big thermal very low .. wandered about for a while .. tried more photos over the lake, then wandered about some more playing on the strong thermals. Landed back with nothing to show really ("Ha Ha Ha ..." said one weird player on MK server ?!)

Fantastic that Lowlands team made such good efforts setting this task up. Respect to pre-GPS/logger pilots.

Cadfael · Post by **Cadfael** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 8:54 am

We will not dramatize it, of course, it was banality, for all that it was GREAT task and IDEA! It is a pitty, that not so many people was free for this special task. I believe, that it was not last task like this and LLC organizers will prepare for us similiar nice task at the end of LLC marathon. Really fantastic experience.

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 2:56 pm

It was just an experiment to do something fun.. My first idea was a "target landing".. like many of us do IRL at the end of the season: land as close to a flag as possible. Unfortunately, since in Condor no ground crew is available to push your plane from the field, this was not possible.

So we tried doing a "photo recon", much like a dropping. Identify and overfly objects for which you are given a photograph.

Do not expect such tasks on a regular basis though, for many reasons. One of them being I can't score them (yet). Having both problems analysing these flights with seeyou (need to do everything by hand) and having even greater problems with our scoring program that really doesnt understand whats going on. I'll try and provide a manual scoring in the next days, but don't expect one fast.

Another problem with such tasks is the preparation.. lot of work! Even with just regular tasks, LLC is already costing us our sleep, marriages and jobs

Lastly, its quite hard to make such a task fair. The person making the task has a HUGE advantage, we can't avoid someone using a real PDA, etc, etc.

We might do some other, unusual tasks in the future (we still have some ideas), but it will stay exceptional..

Tomcat84 · Post by **Tomcat84** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 3:18 pm

hey vertigo, do you know already how many people photographed all the right waypoints? im still curious if i took pics of the right things haha

Cadfael · Post by **Cadfael** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 3:37 pm

Maybe you can only calculate no. of correct object for every pilots. For pilots with the same no. of object is possible count time of flight. It is not official task, so it is only for fun...
I could imagine lot of works with it, so I am saying really THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all, who prepared it, it was unforgettable task.

thermal · Post by **thermal** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:59 am

Interesting task!

Family left late, so I couldn't join it.
Afterwards I had a look at this mistery task, the map and the various pictures and gave it a try.
Of course I didn't have the official flight plan and had no idea of the weather specifics, so I made my own, sufficiently well...
I understand that here was another camouflaged surprise from the task setters.

I found both my old Turnpoint camera's in the trailer, dusted them off, removed some dead spiders from their internals and loaded the supplied films. Can't even remember when I did that last, because I use GPS loggers/PDA's since the launch of the first sattelite and the receivers became "portable"...
During the task I also discovered that my Turnpoint Photo Technique became a little rusty.

I love my PDA!

The supplied map was not ideal for navigation either, to say the least, and at some of the turnpoints I had no idea what to look for...
A Flying Saucer? Some kind of Met-house? Haven't found them, and I searched well because I wasn't pressed for time.

Somehow I also missed the turnpoint SSE of Ljubliana completely, but back-tracking from somewhere near the Adriatic sea (...) to my surprise, I found it.
Thanks to the beautifull weather I had on this task I finished it, with a huge number of kilometers and even a reasonable speed.
I'm curious about the official results.

Since not having found two of the turnpoints kept bugging me, the next day I set off for a another search.
It turned out that I couldn't reach the Met-house on the mountain top, because the cloud base in "my weather" was too low, and my little daughter finally spotted the flying saucer...

Interesting task, but still I sincerely hope that celluloid films will be withdrawn from marketing soon.