Harris Hill just finished hosting the region3 glider contest and it was good fun.
The contest is a race - whoever flies the farthest the fastest scores the most points. Each morning a specific course is laid out for the contestants and they must fly to various turn points on flights that can last 2 hours or more. Distances are generally 100-200 miles.
There are two classes of aircraft FAI and Sport class and they compete in their own class. The contest lasts a week, which is good since they had only 3 reasonably good flying days plus 1 practice day to get ready.
I worked the retrieve office for the contest. Our job was to track who took off and place a prepared card on the window as they departed. When they landed, we would take the card down. It's a simple way of tracking who is back and who isn't.
If a pilot can't make it back and 'lands out', they are instructed to call the retrieve office and give us relevant information about their location and how to contact them. We then flipped their card over to the red side as a signal to their crew that they need to get the trailer ready and go get the pilot and glider.
We had a couple of land outs but not really too many. Contest pilots are usually quite seasoned but as they push themselves to complete a task, there's always the possibility of a land out. Sailplanes are designed for this and pilots are used to it. The old joke goes, "There are those pilots who have landed out and those that will." Everyone gets a turn eventually, especially when trying to win a contest.
Our Harris Hill juniors did an outstanding job of volunteering and working the competition and everything went smoothly for the week. Watching the pilots launch and waiting for them to return, I wondered whether I would ever do any contest flying.
I doubt it. The learning curve is steep and to be any good at it you need to fly cross country an awful lot. Also, the contests are a week long which puts a crimp in the vacation leave time, plus you have the expense of staying wherever the contest is and of course, you need to own a glider or have one you can take with you. That's a lot of difficult variables for a married person with kids nearing college age and it explains why many of the racing pilots are retired.
 |
| Andy Brayer won the Sport Class |
Interestingly, the Sport Class competition was won by our very own Andy Brayer in a borrowed Discus glider owned by Harris Hill! I guess that sort of shatters the barriers, but of course those were taken care of because he flew the glider from its home base and the contest was held here at Harris Hill. Nevertheless, I'm really happy for Andy - he's one of our juniors and he's turned into a top notch pilot who selflessly give training to our juniors all summer long. He obviously worked hard for this win and he earned it by winning every single day that we flew -particularly against Roy McMaster, one of our ace pilots with a great competition history under his belt. Congrats to both Andy and Roy for their 1, 2 finish.
