Day 5 2012 CCSC XC Camp

by  • 

Well, the camp is over, and Day 5 was the best soaring day of them all.  We had Q’s in all directions, with good climbs to over 5000′ msl.  For Group 1, today consisting of John Mittell (BZ, ASW-27), Glen Betzoldt (W, D2A), Rick Hoffman (SP, ASW-27) and Dan Reagan (MK, 304CZ), I called a 3 hour MAT with a single mandatory turnpoint at Highland County Airport, about 35 miles to the east.  I called the MAT for two reasons – the forecast indicated that conditions might be much better out to the east, but there was some indications of possible overdevelopment.   I thought with the single turn MAT we could get a good look at conditions along the way, and decide to either continue east, head north or south, or retreat back west.  As it turned out I’m glad I did, as cloudbases dropped over 1000′ from about 6000′ to lower than 5000′ on the way to the first turn.  So, we were able to discuss our options and try and set up a good route along the east-west wind line.  Another challenge for the day was that conditions blued out just northwest of CCSC, so we wanted to stay in a fairly narrow east-west band and still use up the 3 hours while exploiting clouds and lift streets.    I guess I let my inner racer get away from me a bit on this last day, and we got a bit strung out on the way back from Highland County.  John Mittell (BZ) was able to stay with me most of the flight, and we both wound up with 60+ mph for the task, unheard of speeds for dry gliders at CCSC.  Our final glide was something like 69 miles at 73 L/D, including the last 15 miles or so at warp speed (excluding the last 15 miles of the final glide, we did 54 miles at L/D = 173).

I have to say that at least in my opinion, the XC Camp at CCSC was an unqualified success.  We flew 4 days out of 5, and on the one ‘non-flying’ day (Monday), we flew a 3-hour task in Condor and everyone had a great time.  The 20 flying pilots and 5 auditors hung in there grimly as we fed them lecture material through a firehose, and they responded with good feedback and intelligent questions.  Our mentors (John Lubon, Jim Garrison, Jim Price/ Rob Cluxton (flying alternately in the G-1000 and in a club ASK-21), John Murray, and myself did yeoman duty shepherding their charges around on and off the course.  All of our auditors got at least two rides apiece in one of the 2-place ships, and were to a man ecstatic about the experience.  We even had one flying participant experience his very first landout (followed by another one the next day, but that’s a different story) in a HUGE soybean field that had to be a mile on a side, and smoother than our grass runway.  If you have to land out, I heartily recommend the CCSC soaring area in early summer.  At the end of this post, I have included three of the many comment emails from our participants.

At our thank-you party on Friday night, Jim Garrison, Rolf Hegele, and I sat at one of the picnic tables and talked a bit about how an offhand remark from Jim (“you know Frank, you guys should really host an XC camp at your place”) took on a life of its own, and wound up being so well supported by pilots, auditors, and so many CCSC volunteers that it became impossible to thank them all (but thank you anyway, each and every one of you!).  This thank-you post would not be complete without also thanking the SSA for generously supporting the camp using some of the excess contest sanction fee fund accumulated over the last few years.  With about $3000 of direct funding from the SSA, we were able to subsidize participant entry fees, mentor lodging, meals, and tow expenses.  Also, Scott Manley, my partner in crime in the Condor Corner series graciously volunteered to come here from Minnesota to help with the Condor flying, but wound up running  our launch line instead – thanks!!

We are already starting to think about holding a camp here again next year (clearly we are totally deranged to want to do this again!)

Frank (TA).

 

 

———————  Comments from John Morinec (24, ASW-24) —————————————-

Here’s a couple of ideas for next year’s camp:

First, this is the kind of camp that is very much needed for pilots like me wishing to compete but with no contest experience. What you’ve accomplished here is amazing, particularly for a first time effort.

I’d like to see Jim Garrison’s presentation on pre-contest prep incorporated with John Lubon’s first day orientation. Get everybody squared away early on their flight computers and turnpoint downloading. It would be helpful to discuss planned tasks at this time with land out strategies. Google Earth is good, but handout pictures with the best alternatives would be better, or both. I know time requires more time.

Jim’s presentation on medical considerations and dehydration was the best I’ve seen. Don’t change a thing.

Suggest you consider rotating mentors. Spread the knowledge/experience base. Also, strongly suggest that a daily pre-flight meeting and post-flight debrief be mandatory. If asked, I would have to say our mentor was never available for a group meeting before or after a flight, only on the grid. I know people have other commitments, but issues arise and they have to be addressed in a stress-free environment.

 

 

——————————  Comments from Richard Ceder (local pilot flying a Libelle) —————

Frank, Rolf, John, Jim & everyone else who contributed to the X-Country Soaring Camp,
I would like to thank everyone for a organizing a great event.  I’ve had fun, learned a huge amount, flown to places I have never visited before.  (I though Morningstar just rated investments, not a landing strip).  As someone who has not flown much in the last 10 years and was getting frustrated by my atrophying soaring skills, just flying multiple times in a week had allowed me to re-hone my soaring skills and, I hope, made me a better pilot.
I thought that the overall preparation and organization was fantastic and I can only begin to imagine how much work went into making this event happen.  The food was just want was needed and great value.   Thanks to Rolf, Harolyn & Joanne.
Overall a huge success and something CCSC should repeat in the future.
As with any first time event, I feel that a few areas could be refined. My thought are below.
1)  Who is the camp aimed at, pilots that are just beginning to go cross-country, pilots who are proficient cross-country fliers who want to improve their skills, pilots who are preparing for their first competition, or competition pilots who want to improve their performance ?  I suspect it is a combination of all the above.  However, even at CCSC, there are some good cross country pilots who never fly in competitions, and also pilots who fly cross country largely as practice for competitions.  Their needs and desires from a cross-country camp like this are rather different. I would suggest that the camp would be better named something like “cross-country and competition soaring camp” to recognize that a lot of the content pertains to competition flying, not just cross country.   I also suggest that the presentation content be split into two distinct segments  The first 2 days devoted largely to cross country flying skills, weather and safety, and the next two day on competition related subjects (start and finish rules, task formats, tactics, etc.).  Personally, I was not sure that we needed a discussion on competition start and finish procedures and tactics on the first day.
2) Although I am not an avid Condor flier, the use of Condor as a simulation and teaching tool on non-flying days is a great idea.  I do think that a lot more of the learnings / teachings from the camp could have been incorporated in to the Condor session, which I thought was treated more like a computer game, than cross-country flight simulation.  For instance, we “flew” a 150 mile cross country competition “Condor flight” in Slovenia without any pre-flight preparation, but the Thursday evening presentation was all about how one should prepare for a competition, and essentially any cross country flight, especially in completely new terrain.  My suggestion is that before a Condor session, as a minimum, there is a review of the course, the weather, the course options, the off-field landing choices, etc. so that it is really a simulation of what one should do if it was really a competition flight, not just a computer game.  The post Condor discussion could be expanded to include not only a comparison of the best tactics to fly fast, but why people landed out, crashed, etc.
3) I found that the cross-country flying with a mentor was a great confidence builder and learning session.  But, I think it could be greatly enhanced if one could convince the mentors to describe their thought processes over the radio during the flight.  For instance, “we are changing the plan because….”,  “I am diverting off-course because….”, “I and going to tank-up at this thermal because….”, “we are going to wait in this half knot thermal because….”.   I would recommend that a more formal 30 minute post-flight de-brief session, perhaps first thing the next morning, with the group and the mentor where the flight could be reviewed, questions asked, etc. would be very beneficial.
4)  I would have found a session of available cross-country software, web sites, etc., and a review of features, pros and cons, would have been good.
This email turned out to be rather longer than the two paragraphs you asked for, but I want to repeat that the camp has been great-fun, educational and I am glad that I spent 5 of my limited vacation days and having to catch-up with hundreds of work emails to attending it.
Thanks again to all who made it possible.
Richard Cedar.
RD1 / N11RD Bird
.
.
—————————–  Comments from David Reitter (LY, Std Cirrus) —————————-
PERSONAL THOUGHTS:1. Caesar Creek is awesome.  I had a fun week.  Thank you for putting this together.  The Condor flying on rain days is a great idea.2. The lectures worked fine. There is always some overlap with things one has read or learned at some point (ground school) (e.g., how to read a Skew-T – at least the basics), but I got a lot out of it.  The hydration talk was enlightening (I always wondered about who needs Gatorade!).3. The flying was most important to me.  Learning to do XC for me is a combination of A) sorting out technical setup (I think I came prepared and had no problems, so it was a good test),  B) addressing my physiology problems (I made some progress), C) actual flying technique and competition strategy.I made most progress by understanding some of my mistakes on flying day 1: John Murray told me: “you suck”, and then he told me, why. I followed the wrong people and imitated their ill-advised thermaling.  In part, this was due to my limited experience in such busy environments, and I stuck to the morning’s lesson on matching other people’s bank angle and speed.  Big mistake.  So perhaps you want to moderate that discussion.  I did appreciate John’s feedback.

Flying day 2 went great – we stayed together and had great fun.  I heeded LX’s lesson and that worked for me.

Flying day 3, a blue day, didn’t work out: like others, I came back for a relight, but scared myself doing so and didn’t feel like flying for an hour.   The fast-paced environment and my being tired lead me to not visualize the conditions (wind!) enough.   I launched again late after some rest and had a nice local soaring flight (no trouble staying up, but lacking a team, no XC on a blue day).

I’m learning a lot, but it’s also been a humbling experience.

4. Ground crew was absolutely great.  Loved the availability of golf carts.  Loved the speedy launches.   Good stuff.  Some ground crew needs safety training.  Everything was very well organized – trailer parking, camp sites, showers, food – and very affordable, too.

ADVICE FOR FUTURE XC SOARING CAMPS:

1. Give individualized feedback for people’s Condor flying.  Assigned mentors could do this, for instance.  Make the Condor task harder: more realistic weather.  Do not let people take risks they wouldn’t take in real life.

2. Be careful about the lecture’s messages.  I misunderstood “thermaling politely in gaggles” as “thermal stupidly and fail to climb!”.  Lubon’s idea (was it him) on “your primary task is to climb!” was good for balance.

3. The weather talk was good (great tools presented), but the Skew-T diagram explanation might not have been perfectly clear to someone who didn’t know how to read a sounding anyway.   It probably requires too much knowledge about the underlying processes, I guess.

4. My mentor gave individual feedback on my flying on day 2 based on my log file.  That should be standard for all participants.

5. Keep up safety.  You know what the infractions were (e.g., launch starting with other towplane on final, towplane starting roll w/o signal and breaking a rope;  people coming back low for a relight on day 3).

6. Put rally points in the .cup database that is given out and on the map.   Sorry, finding Stolle’s is trivial to you, but it’s hard to do in very choppy lift on one’s first launch at the site (to only 2,000ft AGL).

7. More nutritious dinners.  More vegetables.  Less fried and battered meat.  Fruit for lunch was good.

OK, that’s it.  Thank you for putting this together.  I’m having fun here and I’m learning stuff.

– David