Day 31 in review?

[Icarus]

It's our own fault....not so long ago we told Andreas & Stephan that we'd like more "interesting" tasks.

This one kept me busy for about 3.5hrs! Had an OK start but just around TP2 things went "South" and after a long low grovel I decided to retreat back to the start and try again. I arrived back at the airfield at the same time as the first pilot of our group - who had just finished!

Another launch, through the start at 15h24 and into a 6kt thermal a few kms later I was on my way. Nice relaxed flying, staying high, getting good climbs.....BUT the day was dying. Around TP5 at 17h30, no Cu's left in the sky, sun looking yellow rather than white.....running up and down the West facing ridges for 20mins...NADA...OK losing interest now...it's 03h00 in my "real life" and I haven't had any sleep yet. Airbrakes out, landed in a field...NZ(1)- H9(0)

So overall this one didn't work for me. Trying to "man-handle" Open class ships close to large rocks for hours tends to wear off after a while. The combination of sunny slope and wind on opposite slopes is ok, but every time I thought I had it worked out the wind would be veering through too large an angle to be reliable.

Nice to see the usual leader board shuffled around a bit with some other names - I guess the problem with this is it encourages more "interesting" tasks by the task setters? That's not such good news for me

Congrats to the topguns, this was a tough one!

H9

[UrosM]

Yes, it's nice to see some fresh names on the top. I allready noticed, that there could be a big difference, if we fly classic arcade style task (climb 3m/s -> fly 250 km/h -> climb 4m/s and so on...), or some realy "interesting" task, with avg. speed below 120 km/h.

In arcade, it makes a big difference, if you center in first circle, or maybe in third. If you loose 30 seconds in each thermal, and say, you need 10 thermals tor the task, this is 300 seconds. Plus one or two minor mistakes, every one cost you, let's say 2 minutes, and that's it.

If task is realy hard, there's more errors, but also more room to repair your mistake(s). In hard task, even flying robots make mistakes (maybe not so many as we others do, but they do), and that keep your chances for better position on the end.

[Andy1248]

Glad that I was not the only one who struggled. I always aim to finish a task. So may not be fast but will get home. Having crashed on Sunday I was determined to do better. But started late behind the pack and soon fell even further behind (not unusual). Really got caught out on that zig zag accross the mountains, late in task and struggled to get the hieght to get over and took long detours.

But I got back.

[cruiser]

Actually, this is the kind of task that you have to fly like in RL. Stay high, above the ridges and there will be no drama. Only problem was getting the first lift.

A nice task overall.

[Y8]

Indeed a very exciting and interesting task. The maximum start altitude with 1400m was very low for that particular weather situation. For me that was the main difficulty of the task. I nearly struggled with that because i did not find any lift on the first 25 Kilometer after the start. I just thought about dumping my ballast and where to land, as i found a 3m/s lift at the ridge only 100 m above ground. Taking 2000 m altitude by this lift my average speed must be very low and i know my chances of a good result were gone. The rest of the task was staying high and find the right places at the ridges where a lift could be which was not so easy too. I like these difficult tasks because they offer some chances of better results even to pilots who are not the fastest but have some skills in getting home at difficult conditions.

Good work SBC-Team

Y8

[bagger]

The taskat beginning appears very difficult. After my first strat, I didn't get any lift and I go back for restart. On way back I hit a nice 3 m/s, fast landing on airfield, tow... After restat task I hit the same thermal 3m/s. It give me a good start position befor hills. On hills again 3+ thermal. after 1 PZ I catch thermal in place where it shouldn't be...shady side of hill...+4 m/s, bingo . After this I fly over ridges to try find proper side ( upwind / sunny).

Tadej is right, typical RL task, stay high - will be no problems.

My first 1000 points in SBC

[cruiser]

CG. We had a very similar flight, but you got a bit more lucky with the thermal strength

[UrosM]

My first 1000 points in SBC

Congrats for the winning, bagger.

Looks like nice race, the kind I like. I was unable to fly SBC last night, had some homework to do

[S.Berx]

Well I tried starting soon, affter not getting lift I returned to the gaggle turning in the sector to go for a retry, having gained enough altitude i tought this is it. Dived on and offcourse missed the sector, looped back tru (not to smart tbh) makin me end up goin for my first thermal at 1100 meters at 150km/h
After havin a nice first thermal of 3m's upto 2700 I was off, just maikin my way over the ridges staying nicely high and dry takin whatever good thermal i came across, makin my way up the tp's. After the finish to my greatest surprise I was leading the server and lookin how close the end difference was for the overall leading spot I prolly lost it at the start, but cg JK nice race.
Never thought in getting so close, at the start i didnt even think getting round with all that bluesky

[Tonyh]

Congrats JK

A good start was the key to a fast time on this task. I didn't have one

Went south of track and up the valley looking for good ridge thermals. the wind was all over the place causing a lot of sink on the sunny ridges which I stuck and the couple of strongish thermals I found were almost impossible to centre and i lost a lot of time just making enough height to survive.

I didn't get a really good climb until just past TP2, 3-4 m/s to 3300m, which set me up nicely for a faster finish to the task.

[bagger]

Thank you all


It was lucky task for me. First time no problems on track

[Phoebus]

W"ell done JK and S1, CG! My first start at 1400m was bad, found only a dieing thermal. Went back and got 3.8 m/s very close to the startline. Turned to TP1 again with 2700m and had no problems to finish the race. Was surprised to find me on P3 but very happy. All in all a good and interresting task. Thanks to the SBC-Team!

[Freebird]

An interesting task where the lift was never quite where you would expect, I made a good start by flying down the first leg at altitude to spot where the first thermal would be which was marked by 2 gliders so could make a confident start.lost about 30-40 seconds by flying past TP1 while watching 2 gliders in different thermals just past the TP .. I was trying to judge who had the better climb rate then suddenly realised I had just missed the sector, that cost me about 8 places but only about 10 points! The rest of the flight was straightforward with clouds marking thermals but I did vary my MC setting a bit to make sure I didn't get trapped behind any mountains on the way. I thought speeds would be quite a bit faster on the later servers as with only about 12 people in the 14.45 there was a chance that some of the best thermals could go unmarked so was surprised when I got home from work to find I had only dropped 9 places overnight..

CG's to Bagger & Simon with some nice times.