From: HAHLLUND@finabo.abo.fi (Hans Ahllund Inf)
Subject: re:learning from comps.
Organization: Abo Akademi University, Finland
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 23:16:28 GMT
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I had participated in several regional competitions before I went to
the first big contest, so I wasn't totally green when I entered
my first "big" contest. The club-class nationals. It had about 
20+ contestants. 
There is much talk about your first contest and how much you learn
from it. Suprinsingly I don't think that I learned so much about the
contest as I had anticipated. I had about 400 hours PIK before the
contest so I guess level of experience plays a big roll in how much
of what you experiense during the meet actually is new..

You should fly a lot cross-country before entering a bigger contest.
The most basic theory of how and how fast you should fly in different
kinds of weather should be something that you know already.
That way you can concentrate more on competition strategy itself and 
see what other pilots do but you don't.

But back to the subject , that is what did I really learn from my first
big contest :
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The first thing I noticed was probably how fast you can loose points.
Just make one wasted turn in a too weak thermal, and the competitors
have a 30 second lead.
 
I noticed that when I was all psyched up and wanted to go fast,
I had a tendency of leaving a good thermal too early (long before cloudbase).

Map reading and orientation needs more practise, because they do take about
30 % of active time. One day I headed about 30 degrees off course after a 
turnpoint. As this wasn't enough , I eaven ended up under a raining 
cloud street. This cost me a lot of time , especially when I had to fly
alone for a while after that.

Don't fly alone. Flying alone particularly on dry days is very slow.
I am not suggesting that you should leach either , but it is good to
be able to use other ships as markers.

On really hard speed days, try to keep away from other ships when thermalling.
Trying to center among 5 other ships in a 5 m/s thermal is ridiculous.

Try to make your own decisions about where to go next and how fast etc.
I used this strategy as much as possible in the contest. I didn't care
what other ships did or which way they went. On one dry day , when you
had to cross a big lake I knew that the majority of the ships headed
straight across the lake hoping for the best. I went around the lake 
on the upwind side of it( no seabreeze). It was slow and I flew alone
for several hours but I don't regret it. Those who crossed the lake 
won by maybe 5 minutes or so but it could have been the other way around.

You get very tired when flying a competition flight. Much more that you 
would on a normal cross-country flight. Demands longer and more active
flights during practice period.

There was some technicues that I hadn't thought about at all before I
saw them in action. One of these was : get into your opponents blind
spot when leaving a thermal. It will take the follower a circle or two
to notice that you are gone.

The starting time was not so difficult to select as you would think.
If the weather is bad, be off with the first starters. In good weather
you can wait about 30-45 min after the first starter and then be off.
The most important thing is that you will have a good first climb, this 
will affect your entire flight. A bad start gets you in a bad mood and you
are likely to make more mistakes later on when you try to compensate for the
bad start. 

Don't start streching for the final glide too early. Fly normally until
you have enough height for a safe final glide. On several days I started
flying a final glide too early and hoped to get the rest of the required
height pulling up in a strong thermal. I'll never do that again.
On my last contest day I got too low and 10 km out on my too early glide.
I just had to find a thermal and get a 100 meters more. This cost me at
least 5 minutes of totally wasted time.

This was my major screw up.. 
If you get in a good position competitively. Don't just try to hold on
to that position, but try to increase the lead eaven further.
I had a really good flight on the first contest day (I won the day).
So , I thought this is easy , just fly relaxed and you will hold on to
your position. This is the wrong way to think , on the second day I 
finished somewhere in the middle of the list. 
Another exaple was on a dry day when I got a good start and had gained
so much on the leading-pack that I was among the first at the first turn
point. So I thought that I'll just fly on with the rest and get a good
placing. But this did not happen. I dropped back somehow.
So, always fly at 110 % at all times in competitions.
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What about you others ???  
Does this have any resemblance to your first competitions.........
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.soaring