http://www.ssa.org • August 2019 • Soaring 37a compelling reason to deviate, like
circling birds (or gliders), or a known
weak area ahead. Small deviations are
less significant on longer tasks flown
at higher speeds. Note: This is a heuris-
tic for low, weak days with short tasks,
and should by no means be considered the
answer for all conditions. For a thorough
treatment of deviations, see John Co-
chrane’s excellent article: https://faculty.
chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/
soaring/docs/deviations_I.pdf.
Get high, stay high (or not) –
There’s an old soaring adage, “get
high, stay high” that is gospel in
cross-country and racing circles.
However, when the thermals are
struggling to pierce 3,000 ft AGL,
you never really get high. The conser-
vative approach is to stay as high as
possible – for us, this typically meant
we tried to stay above 2,000 ft AGL –
but this severely limited our working
band. Many of the day winners found
themselves low (like 1,000 ft AGL
low) on many occasions. While this
meant they accepted a greater risk of
landing out, it also allowed them to
sample more air between climbs and
to take fewer thermals. As a result,
they often experienced higher aver-
age climb rates and spent less time
centering thermals – both critical for
flying faster. Ultimately, the level of
risk you should be willing to accept
depends on your standings in the
contest. Larger risks may yield larger
rewards, but you may be out of the
running after a landout. And the levelof acceptable risk changes depending
on the stage of the contest – you can’t
win a contest on the first day, but you
can certainly lose it!
Patience – You go nowhere fast
at 45 mph, or climbing in 1 kt ther-
mals, or (insert characteristic of low,
weak days here). On days like this,
you never really get into racing mode.
Instead, you spend the entire flight
(or nearly the entire flight) in survival
mode – the imperative is to finish theTeam EM at the morning task briefing. Team EM task strategy session.