turnpoints

When you look down and ahead to your left, you see a lake; you are not over it yet. However, when pilots call on the radio, they claim they are over it. The lack of position knowledge leads to some confusion, especially when it is a radio call when entering the pattern. Based on experience at uncontrolled airports, saying ‘entering the 45’ narrows your position down to about five sq miles, which doesn’t

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

Navigating to the turnpoint safely is crucial. It is very easy to get caught up looking at the GPS. It displays the mileage and direction. But what it does not do is see other traffic, follow energy lines, look for thermals, read the clouds, plan your next leg...

Everyone took a different path and made thousands of decisions however many times they all end up evening out and arrive to the turnpoint

In my first contest, the scorer didn't want to deal with developing film, so he loaned me a Garmin GPS to record my flight. I safely stored it and flew the contest turnpoints as if I were taking pictures of each one. This resulted in missing each turnpoint and accumulating enough turnpoint penalties to get a negative score for the day.

Most of the missed turnpoints today are from pilots being