36 Soaring • August 2019 • http://www.ssa.org
(All photos courtesy of
Bo Michalowski.)
I
’m back from the Region 5 North
contest at Al and Rhonda Tyler’s
beautiful Perry International Airport.
Perry routinely attracts a large field of
very talented pilots, so in preparation
for the JWGC, Eric Mozer invited me
to fly with him in his beautiful ASG
32Mi! Weather for the contest was
low, weak, and blue – perfect training
for European conditions.
So what do you learn flying one of
the most competitive U.S. contests
with Eric Mozer, a two-time medal-
ist at World Gliding Championships?
A lot. Here are five things:
You need to learn to drive the
gaggle – Gaggle flying is not a skill
required to be competitive in most
U.S. contests, particularly in the west-
ern U.S. You can place well or even
win a U.S. national soaring champi-
onship without gaggle flying, in part
due to the size of typical U.S. nation-
als. Case in point: I flew indepen-
dently and finished on the podium
at the 2017 Club Class Nationals
(Hobbs). Perry was my first contest
where conditions absolutely dictated
that you had to fly with the gaggle to
do well (or at the very least, not flying
with the gaggle would severely hinder
your ability to do well). To succeed in
these conditions, you must be able to
drive the gaggle. For example, when
the gaggle fails to center a thermal,
this means you proactively shift your
circle and force other pilots to follow.
When you start outclimbing them,
they will. However, be careful which
gaggle you choose to drive. You want
to work cooperatively with a fast gag-
gle composed of pilots with similar
or higher skill levels. At a WGC, this
isn’t a problem, but at a U.S. contest,
it can be. If the choice is between fly-
ing with a slow gaggle or flying solo,you may be better off flying solo. The
choice is yours.
On short tasks, small deviations
hurt, a lot – Weather for the contest
was low, weak, and blue. As a result,
winning speeds for the Open Class
were typically in the upper 40s or
low 50s (mph) with distances in the
110-120 mile range (excluding Con-
cordia – Concordia is in a class of its
own). A 5 mile deviation (that is, 5
miles of flying that do not contribute
to your task distance) on a day where
the winner flies 120 miles is approxi-
mately 4% of the total task distance.
That’s 40 points lost on a 1,000 points
day. This just shows that it is impera-
tive to fly straight lines unless there’s5 Lessons from Perry
COmPETITION COrNEr
BY MICHAEL MARSHALL
Above: Next to launch. Below: Team EM.