The Art of Grovelling

The flying season is winding down fast here in Victoria, autumn is here, the trees are turning colors and dropping their leaves before they sleep for the winter.

Looking back at the comp season, I realized a few things - comps can really expose the "holes" in your flying skills.  I think one of the reasons people get into flying comps is they want to experience a new facet of flying, or to take their XC flying to the next level, and what happens is they learn new flying skills they didn't even know existed.

The last two comps were held in really weak conditions - at least I experienced it as really weak because I cherry pick the days I go flying, which means I only fly the best and booming-est days, and so I rarely am down low struggling.  Interesting it took me so long to realize that the weakest days are when my results are usually the worst of the comp.  I was blaming the weak conditions...

The comp at Corryong was composed of days of desperate grovelling, down low and bobbeling along for kilometer after kilometer, just about to land the whole time.  And I am not used to that - so I was tense for long periods, and when you are tense, you don't make your best decisions.  It's pretty easy to say to yourself "This is total shite, a complete waste of time, total suckage" and then give up and land next to the retrieve vehicle...

What I got from it was pretty amazing - although it's not my favorite type of flying - it's amazing at how far you can fly just barely above the ground and it is a really valuable skill as it takes a lot of patience and fast decision making to string together every every bug fart and terrain feature to just barely avoid landing time and time again.

I also had a few moments when instead of getting discourage about struggling in the shee-ite weakness, I instead became curious about things - curious about how I was going to dig myself out of tree tops, curious about how this was the 12th time I was sure I was about to land, but just found another beep that kept me alive until the next ridge, etc.

There were a few moments where I actually started relaxing and just letting the glider kind of find it's way around, let it do some sniffing about for the tiniest scrap of lift, and the more I believed I wasn't going to dirt, or at least sort of resigned myself to my incredible lack of altitude, the less desperate I felt and the more the glider felt my anti-gravity thinking and found another beep....  Jedi-mind tricks I guess...

The Happiness Factor

It's no secret that the number of pilots entering competitions is in decline, and if the trend continues, it's just a matter of time before paragliding competitions are a thing of the past. Don't believe it? It takes a minimum of 40 pilots to have a AAA competition. The AAA Comp at Corryong in 2010 had 48 pilots in attendance...

About a year ago, I was thinking about writing an article for Cross Country Magazine. The title was going to be "Why we compete". I wanted to find out why people would burn every last second of their vacations to go fly paragliding competitions.

I started the article, but didn't finish it because even after interviewing some of the top pilots, I wasn't getting as close to the answer as I had hoped. Fast forward one year: I just finished 2 weeks of competition in Victoria, Australia.

The second comp was in a little town called Corryong, and the flying is brilliant there, well it's brilliant during a normal "dry" summer. The incredible amount of rain during the past couple months has made the ground so wet and green that the flying has been extremely weak, so we aren't getting as high as we usually do, and this has made it harder to get good tasks, and it's late in the season, the site is an afternoon site, so the flying window was extremely short. The end result was that fewer people had an opportunity to get to goal.

I was camping with most of the newer comp pilots, which was cool as the buzz was energizing, and I got an understanding of what they were thinking about as the comp went along. And when asked why they compete, the typical things came up - comps are a great way to learn from others better than you are, and the thrill of the game, etc, but what I somehow missed in my past search for the answer became crystal clear, and it was amazing simple - people compete because they want to make it to goal. The real satisfaction for most pilots comes when they and most of their flying buddies get back to camp and swap stories and celebrate making it round the course. This is what I call the "happiness factor" - the more pilots in goal, the more fun people have and the more likely they are to show up for next years comp. If the "happiness factor" is as important as I think it is, I could be vital to the future of competition paragliding.

To keep competitions from going extinct, you need to do three basic things:

1. Create valid tasks that provide enough decision making opportunities to sort out the best pilots from the good ones.
2. Get as many pilots into goal as possible, and still accomplish item #1.
3. Bring in new pilots and give them a reason to come back next year.

Getting fully valid tasks and lots of pilots into goal are not mutually exclusive! Some one may say "If 70% of the field get into goal, it's not as valid". And that is just not true - sure the task will probably be shorter, but so what? You don't need to fly 4 hours to separate the best pilots from the good ones. The idea of a paragliding competition is not to make the tasks so hard or long that only a few pilots make goal, that will just discourage the newer pilots from coming next year.

Maybe it's time to adjust the validity parameters (again) and for task committees to change their philosophy and start setting shorter tasks that are still fully valid and get the most pilots into goal?

Corryong Task 4 & 5

Task 4 was a good one, the happiness factor was high (more on that later). The difficulty on T4 was that the task started at 2:30, nominal time is 2 hours, that takes you to 4:30, and the lift has been stopping by 5pm or earlier, so if you get stuck for 15 mins, you run out of lift just before goal... That's was my story for Task 4.

Task 5 was worth less than 200 points, as it took the leader 2 hours to go 12 kms, which was just to the first turnpoint.

Yesterday we didn't fly, and today we went up the hill and the task was canned, comp over...  Results are here.  Oh, and Fred Gungl is Aussie National Champ - for the seventh time.

Pic is of me on task 3, which took us over Pine Mountain, and in my opinion, gave us the best conditions of the comp.

Corryong Task 3

Hazy Day, less clouds and no one makes goal.

#	ID	Type	Radius	Description
1	ell094	start	3000m	ElliotLaunch
2	wal030	waypoint	4000m	Walwa
3	tow040	waypoint	400m	Towong
4	cor030	endspeed	1000m	CorryongAir
5	cor030	goal	400m	CorryongAir

Lets pretend that there wasn't a task on day two, ok? Good, lets move on to task 3....
Today the sky didn't look as good as yesterday, but a 63k task was set out to Walwa and back, which meant we had a wicked valley crossing right out of the gate. Start was at 2pm, but we didn't get high enough to start on time, and the first glide was a death glide... We got into Mt Mittamatite super low, below the south east spur ridge and kicking trees. Nice way to start the day - yesterday I sunk out on this same transistion, but today I flew a little smarter.

Most managed to claw out, and once high over Mittamatite, the race got better as we had lots of features to fly over. I have never flown that far north at Corryong, so it was nice to see new country... Several hours later we were coming back into Mt Elliot, but the day was late and the lift was already shutting down and no one got a climb where there should have been one, so we tried to find the best line and get as close to goal as possible. Results are here

Corryong Task 1

We are camping so I'm try to post everyday, but it's more difficult.

Yesterday was ok, but it is very wet and green here, so it's not the booming Corryong of years gone past that we are used to. The task was good, but high cloud moved in and shut the day down. About 3 pilots made goal. The rest of us were left ridge soaring in the shade.

Today looks a bit better. Results are here.

Bright Open is Over

The 2010 Bright Open is over. Congratulations to the top 10 pilots:

1	Felipe Rezende	3327
2	Geoff Wong	3318
3	Shane Hill	3255
4	Ivan Anissimov	3112
5	Dave Gibbs	2878
6	Andrew Horchner	2873
7	Benn Kovco	2827
8	JJ Bastion	2675
9	Paul Underwood	2664
10	Schuster Mirko	2606

Here are some stats for the Comp. A successful comp in all metrics in my opinion.

Sunday is the first task of the Ozone Corryong Open! The weather is looking good and we are psyched.

Metric	Value
Comp Days	7
Tasks Flown	4
Sum of Task Kms (flown)	225
Sum of task winners points	3621
Pilots in Comp	59
Local Pilots in Comp	3
Reserve Tosses	0
Number of Smiles	68724

Task 4 - Bright Open

Good day, last day of the comp!
Task 4:

#	ID	Type	Radius	Description
1	mys080	start	400m	MysticTO
2	7P-100	speed	1000m	GoldmineTwr
3	7S-100	waypoint	400m	SmokoRidge
4	lpy073	waypoint	400m	LittlePyramid
5	5F-022	waypoint	400m	Eurobin
6	7S-100	waypoint	400m	SmokoRidge
7	6S-034	endspeed	1000m	MysticLZ
8	6S-034	goal	400m	MysticLZ

We launched from Mystic again today. The task was great, 62km. The day was a bit weird - really slow in places and really fast in others, a great day to know when to speed up and when to slow down.  Photo is of me, nice shot Hamish!

Today was the only day of the comp that I had a good start, but I lost the lead gaggle after the 2nd turnpoint - it is so easy to do on a weak day. Our up valley turnpoint made everyone decide if they were going to go up the left ridge or up the right ridge, and the right ridge (MT Porepunkah) was the faster way. I followed the lead gaggle around the left ridge and it was so weak and slow and painful until we crossed the valley at the Valley Homestead TP, and got over Mt Porepunkah, then it was fast until Lil Mystic where it was really painful, and then fast again. It wasn't a typically day.

Meredyth went with the second group which took the fast route and she made goal, nice way to end the comp!

Tonight is presentation night, free food and wine! Tomorrow we head over for a week of racing at the Ozone Corryong Open! Bright Open Results are here

Task 3 - Bright Open

Finally, good conditions give us the best task of the comp!
Task 3:

#	ID	Type	Radius	Description
1	mys080	start (exit)	400m	MysticTO
2	7P-100	speed (exit)	1000m	GoldmineTwr
3	7S-100	waypoint (entry)	400m	SmokoRidge
4	4D-020	waypoint (entry)	1000m	HappyValley
5	6F-028	endspeed (entry)	400m	PorepunkBridge
7	6L-028	goal (entry)	400m	PorepunkAir

We launched from Mystic, making the day way easier than the long drive and hike to get to launch that we did yesterday. Blue sky and not much height to it, and the thermals were fairly weak, so we really had to shift gears and make good decisions.
The task was the perfect length - 58km, and took Geoff Wong 2:50 to complete. The crux was at the Happy Valley TP, it was very weak all around the TP, and I and a few others decided to cross the valley and hope for a climb on the ridge and then tag the TP, which was in the middle of the valley. The leaders gambled and most of them went directly to the TP and got it and were able to find climbs on the north ridge, but not everyone.

I had to scratch so low for so long, but I finally got back up and was drifting towards Myrtleford Hill, and because it always works, I deviated course and went for the sunny side on Myrtelford Hill, I found my best climb of the day, then got the TP, and flew over the scatchy part of the course. I caught up with Hamish, Benn and Jason T, and Benn and I found the highest climb of the day (1700m) and we flew to goal together, but we barely made it as it was getting late and the lift was really shutting down.

One day left to race, and then we head over for the Ozone Corryong Open! Results are here