Monthly Archives: May 2018

This week is not the topic of how to efficiently roll out, but when to roll out. How do you know it is time? Particularly the theme of this series is how not to do it by learning from my mistakes.

The problem becomes when you are impatient and not really paying attention to your average climb rate. This has happened to me countless times. I would see another glider or cloud or something and

There are a lot of things to remember when flying in these turn areas. Being low on the into the wind turn and high on the downwind turn, the last cloud might not work, putting all of your eggs into one basket...

Now we put these concepts into deciding where to turn in a turn area task. Before you start the flight you need to have a good weather briefing to determine where you are more likely

Remember that sailplane racing is a game of duration, not short sprints. There is no throwing out your bad day, so my best advice is to not have a bad day. You have to think tactically about how each decision will add up to 9 good days of flying.

Flying fast doesn't always mean the highest speed. Sometimes it means avoiding getting stuck. You can have the fastest flight, up to a point, but

This is one of the topics that George Lee would remind me of. This also goes along with the thinking of Jay Rebbeck where you should plan all the way to the ground.

Jay's thinking was you would plan under the clouds, then trying towards the town, trying for the factory, then landing in that field. Keeping that plan going all the time. That way when the lift is being elusive, it was the plan

What is worse is getting to the downwind turnpoint too low and drifting beyond the turnpoint. However, that generally doesn't happen from a planned tactical decision.

You might have heard of the theory to get into the upwind turnpoint low and the downwind turnpoint high.

Let's discuss doing this correctly before I admit how I did this incorrectly. As you are looking ahead for thermals