Kelly Bezemek

Again I will start with a common theme to reduce the pressure of this one small part of the race. You have the next 4 hours to screw it up.

Do not worry about a few hundred feet. When I team fly even being separated by a 1000 ft is not the end of the world, annoying yes, but there is a  lot of fluctuation in the air. Defiantly 200 ft is nothing to worry about (until you are on a marginal final glide,

One of the most common un-centering techniques that students demonstrate to me is switching directions in a thermal. It always happens, a student is not completely centered, the ADHD kicks-in, or something kicks-in and they decide to switch directions. I make sure to look around really well and let them fly right out of the thermal, generally not finding it again. Makes for a good debrief.

Typically

While you are thermalling, you want to be predictable. No erratic movements. No fast changes in direction. At the same time, nothing so slow that the person behind you cannot see what you are intending to do. We all know you should keep your head on a swivel. You want to pay attention to the sailplane ahead of you and follow them while also looking inside of the turn to see if someone is there. You

One of the most common safety issues that come up at contests is gaggle etiquette. At the JWGC 2015, my brother Boyd was the Club Class Safety pilot. His most common "chat" with offending pilots was their inability to safely gaggle fly. Many were being very aggressive trying to gain a few extra feet by compromising safety.

Aggressive gaggle flying is when you cut off another glider in a thermal and

Excited to fly your new toy, winter will be coming soon and you are desperately trying to get some flights in before the snow shuts everything down...Snow, clearly not talking about Southern California. You have a few things you should be tinkering on, but it is another soaring day so you postpone it.

The brakes could use some adjustments. But it's going to take a while to take them apart, clean them