As part of my 12-step crash recovery program, I have taken a solemn vow to never again go to a new soaring site without a thorough review of that site’s contest waypoint database.
Montague Waypoint Database Update
by Bill Elliott •
Yearly Archives: 2014
Dale Kramer, BMapper, and Windows 7
by Bill Elliott •
A month or so ago I was finally forced to abandoned my beloved Dell Precision M6300 laptop running Win XP for a newer ride. I liked that old laptop so much I actually had two identical M6300 models so I could swap the hard drive from my primary to my backup (or vice versa) in case of…
History written during Dutch National Competition
by Bill Elliott •
The did it! The 701 km. task set at the Dutch National Championship was flown by 3 from the 10 participants in this class. Unfortunately “50 shades of grey” spoiled it for 7. What happened? The weather changed earlier than hoped for. After 3 in the afternoon various shades of grey covered the beautiful blue…
Reports for Several European National Competitions
by Bill Elliott •
UK and Polish Nationals… Dutch Nationals with a 700 km. task today… Jena Cup… Hahnweide… and the birth of a baby girl!
Day 4 at the Mifflin National (er…Regional)
by Bill Elliott •
The title is an exaggeration, but not by much. We have had 4 contest days here at Mifflin; two of them have been 4 hour tasks, and the ones that weren’t 4 hours were 3 and 3.5 hours. These are national-level tasks no matter what you call the contest.
Mifflin Day 3 Redux: Too much of a good thing?
by Bill Elliott •
Mifflin is internationally famous for its ridge days, and we typically get one ridge day per contest here. Well, we got one yesterday, but I’m thinking now it was a case of “be careful what you ask for – you might get it”. I’ve been flying here in contests for over a decade, and yesterday’s…
Mifflin Airport Review – Take II
by Bill Elliott •
Today (and quite possibly tomorrow as well) is a rain day here at the Mifflin Region 2 Soaring Contest, so Karl Striedieck was gracious enough to sit with me and go over the many airports/airstrips in the current (2014) database to cull out the bad and verify the good ones.
Mifflin Day 3 – Sometimes the magic doesn’t work
by Bill Elliott •
I believe it was in ‘Little Big Man’ where an indian (Native American to be politically correct) Medicine Man decides to end his own life using his special powers. When he doesn’t die, his comment to Dustin Hoffman was “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t”. Well, that’s what happened today at Mifflin; CD Pepe…
Mifflin, Day 2 – All the food groups
by Bill Elliott •
Today was a classic Mifflin non-ridge day. A very unstable air mass with a significant cap kept us from getting T-storms, but we had just about everything else – wave, wave suppression, 8-10kt thermals, streets (some even aligned with the wind), blue holes, high overcast, spreadout, rain showers, snow showers, and just about anything else that…
2014 Mifflin Regional, Day 1 – The Case of the Missing Muse
by Bill Elliott •
I’ve had a number of people asking why I haven’t been posting on Soaring Cafe this year. I have no real answer to this – I just haven’t felt like it up (and still don’t, really). In answer to the many inquiries, I have started telling people that my Muse abandoned me, and I can’t seem to…
