What about practicing by yourself? Most of us end up flying by ourselves, many of my single seat flights are mid-week when it is slower with students. The problem becomes that you do not have any other pilots to base your flying against. There is no way of knowing if you made the best decisions. Thankfully we have SeeYou. A post-flight analysis is going to be key in figuring out how efficient your flight was. Since there is no way to figure out if your thermalling is better than someone else’s, you need to look at the flight trace and see how quickly you are centering, exiting, etc. You can look at other pilots flights to compare.

Comparing flights during a contest is also very useful because you can replay the flight in your head and see where your competitors flew. You can see how efficient their flying is compared to yours, in the same sky. I remember one flight from 2008 in Luesse where our trace overlapped with the winner, however, they beat us home by 20 minutes. He took an earlier weak climb to get into the better height band and averaged almost 100ft/min better than us for the rest of the day.

Take notes during your flight

Post-flight analysis works well. We spent time on this when flying with George Lee. He would fly with a recorder and every once in a while you would hear some quiet talking and the click of the recorder.... leading to a moment of panic of what did I just do wrong?!? But again it doesn’t have to be what you did wrong, it could be what you did correctly.

I used to push the event marker to remind myself of something going on and would want to review. Maybe it was a thermal or split in the cloud street. Spending your time looking at the flight statics you can check and see how efficient you were flying. How efficient is your cruising? Are you able to cruise at a better than published performance? My goal is to get at least 50% better than what the glider was published to do. Because you do not have a marker to fly against the best resource is your post-flight analysis.

Continually Re-Evaluate

Always look at your options. As you are on course continue to look at the other path you thought about to make sure you decided on the best path. You can always check out the other option. You could make the deviation and explore and see if it is really better. During a contest normally that is not possible because the deviation might be too great, but now you are practicing so it might be worth it to checkout out other ideas. At least it will give you an idea if it was faster or if your first decision was best. Then you can use that experience to make better decisions and more confidence later on.

Practice different techniques

Remember that this is the time to try out new ideas and try and improve your speed. You rarely hear an athlete comment on how they tried this new technique at a competition that they never practiced before. Practice, practice, practice.

SkySight

Comparing your flight to forecasts can also be useful. There is a new feature where you can upload your flight into SkySight. You can see if you were in the best areas based on the forecast. We all know that forecasts can be wrong (Sorry Matthew), so this is not a perfect test. However, as you look at the flight you can recall what the sky looked like and why you chose your path.

COBRA Tongue End Cap

Protect your COBRA trailer from rodents and pests by inserting a COBRA trailer tongue end cap.  The end cap can be installed on square COBRA trailer tongues(not round).  It's inserted on the end inside the trailer.  Rodents and bugs are known to travel up the coupler, then inside the trailer tongue and get inside your trailer.  The end cap prevents enter into your COBRA trailer by sealing the inside end.

NANO 3 Flight Recorder

The NANO3 flight recorder is the smallest flight recorder designed in accordance with the IGC “All Flights” specification. Fly without any cables and chargers! A 1800mAh battery serves up to 36h with advanced power management. The Nano3 has 4 push buttons for easy editing and a rocker button for setting volume/zoom and MacCready.

It has an IGC approval for all flights including world records. It features an integrated 56–channel GPS receiver with built-in antenna, altitude sensor, ENL sensor, security micro–switch, Bluetooth module, and 1700mAh battery.

Banner Photo by Mika Ganzauge

 Garret Willat holds a flight instructor rating with over 8000 hours in sailplanes. His parents have owned Sky Sailing Inc. since 1979. He started instructing the day after his 18th birthday. Since then, Garret has represented the US Junior team in 2003 and 2005. He graduated from Embry-Riddle with a bachelor's degree in Professional Aeronautics. Garret represented the US Open Class team in 2008 and 2010 and the Club Class team in 2014. Garret has won 3 US National Championships.