First REAL cross country - cutting the apron strings

Wow.  I accomplished my first 'real' cross country flight yesterday.  It almost didn't happen, but due to a freak weather occurrence, it did.

This weekend was supposed to be all about attending the National Soaring Museum's soaring symposium and the induction of Dr. Jack Glendenning into the soaring hall of fame.  And it was.  I met and interviewed Dr. Jack and learned about his soaring history and the creation of one of the most widely used tools in soaring - his Blipmap forecast.  Even after speaking with him, I'm not sure he fully understands how integral to soaring this forecast is.  It is THE authoritative and go-to forecast for soaring.  It's the first, and often, last stop for information about how good the soaring will be today or in the next day or two.

The only problem is that the weather outside was INCREDIBLE.  After the symposium, I headed over to the flight line and heard stories of nine and ten thousand foot maximum climbs.  Tim Welles, one of our best pilots, returned from a several hundred mile flight with a giant smile on his face.

Usually, when we have a great day of soaring, the next day is never as good.  I'm happy to report that this was NOT the case this weekend.  Sunday turned out to be a better soaring day than Saturday, and that is saying quite a bit!

Dr. Jack's forecast said it would be pretty good all over with a possibility of overdevelopment.  With that in mind, I put in a task of about 100k to fly, wanting to stay relatively close and start out in short steps.  I knew if I could connect, that high cloud bases would make it a stress free first step into the beyond.

Two of my fellow club members took off ahead of me in the Duo Discus and after I was airborne I saw them above and climbing to cloudbase.  I quickly connected with a strong thermal (yay me!) and in short order was crushing my previous altitude record of 7,400 feet.  I topped out at 8,700 and started towards Mount Pisgah, some 25 miles away.

My mantra for the day was "get high, stay high" and that's what I did.  I flew slower than I needed to - about 70 knots.  There was good lift but also strong sink, so I spent most of the flight speeding up to pass through the sink, or slowing down to take advantage of the lift I encountered.  About 3/4 of the way to Mount Pisgah, I was dipped below 8,000 feet and stopped for a thermal.  I knew I didn't need to stop, but thought I'd sample the difficulty of connecting as I got lower.  I climbed back to 9,000+ feet (!) and set off again.  I was there in short order and still looking good on altitude but it was beginning to cloud up a bit.

I realized that it was over developing and wanted to make sure I was high when it closed up completely so I could survive while the sun was gone.  I headed across a blue hole towards Blue Swan and the air was completely smooth - no thermal activity at all.  But also no significant sink, so I was able to cross the hole with relatively little altitude loss.  I arrived shortly at Blue Swan, near Sayre, NY. and turned for Harris Hill.  I was pretty sure I could glide the whole way back and still make it, so I was feeling pretty confident but I decided I wanted to do a little more.  I punched Watkins Glen track into the PDA and started looking for a thermal as I worked my way back.

About that time, I flew under the overcast and thought that it would shut everything off.  I tried the a cloud or two that was darker than the others and got no lift.  In the distance I saw a very dark and large cloud and headed for that.  It was pretty much in line with my course and I thought I'd see if it was working.

It was.  I circled and climbed above 9,500 feet.  As I circled, the lift got stronger and stronger.  I explored my circle, moving towards the southern edge where I'd observed earlier that the lift was strongest and found even better lift.  I decided to take it all the way up since the rest of the flight would be under the overcast and just as I started back out on the course line, the cloud began to suck me into it.  I put the nose down to speed up but I kept going up as I was flying under the rest of it.  No problem, I popped the spoilers open and descended a bit to stay clear of the bottom and pretty soon I was on my way.

The view from 10,000 feet.  Harris Hill is to the left, about 1/2 way up, Watkins Glen is near the base of Seneca lake near the top.

Pretty quickly I realized I recognized the terrain!  I've been flying flights in this area using the Condor flight simulator and a photorealistic scenery of our soaring area.  Earlier, I'd recognized the windmill farm near Mount Pisgah and now I could see from Sayre up to Elmira and beyond to Harris Hill.  I recognized a warehouse from the scenery and could follow certain landmarks I'd seen before in the simulator.  Nice!

I headed slightly east of the Hill and in the general direction of the track, stopping at the Northeast side around 7,000 feet to tank up.  It had been mostly sink with weak lift, if any, under the overcast so I decided I'd really need enough altitude to glide all the way to Watkins and back before going up there.

I didn't find much and after working it for awhile, I wasn't making much vertical progress, so I headed back to Harris Hill.  Eventually, I found another thermal over there as the overcast began to break up and headed North again towards the track.  Over there I found a small thermal, headed for another cloud that didn't work and though I'd better turn back.  On the way back I flew under another dark cloud and turned to try it.  Success!  This time, the lift seemed to improve with each turn and pretty soon I was climbing through 9,500 smartly.  I decided to hang on and see if I could break the 10k mark.  Sure enough, pretty soon the altimeter was indicating 10,000 feet and the bottom of the cloud was approaching.  I set off for Watkins Glen track. 

I arrived over the track with plenty of altitude and decided to tag the city of Watkins Glen itself, which I did.  I turned for Harris Hill with a massive altitude reserve and completed my first cross country flight!

Stats - the straight line distance between the turnpoints was 142 kilometers, or 88 miles.  I actually flew about 140 miles or 225 kilometers.  I could have been more efficient, but since I was considering Watkins Glen as an add on, I returned to the Hill, found lift, then headed back out in a not so straight line before finally committing to going there, so the overall trip was even less efficient than my newbie status would suggest.

In any case, it's not unreasonable for me to consider a 150k flight as a goal in the future.  I need to keep in mind that the flight this weekend was practically a no-brainer.  Future flights will be more challenging as the leaves come on the trees and the cloud bases get lower, requiring more thermaling and skill to get to and from my turn points.

Nevertheless, a great accomplishment for me.  I had no compunctions leaving Harris Hill and didn't think twice about getting out of range.  Once out on course, I was able to read the sky, see the overdevelopment building, made a plan to deal with it, and kept flexible when trying to reach up to Watkins, trying different ways to get there until I found one that worked.

A great day, indeed. 

My Brain Hurts from Virtual Soaring

I've been working on a project for nearly a year to build a photorealistic scenery for Harris Hill's soaring area.  Frankly, my brain hurts.

But the end is near!  I've generated a test scenery that is about 40 miles by 60 miles and am in the final stages of scaling it to a 250 mile X 140 mile scenery that fits our turnpoints.  And no, it didn't take a year of full-time effort, I put it aside during the soaring season this year and picked it back up this January.

In starting this project last year, I realized that 1) the information about how to do this was scattered everywhere; 2) it requires knowledge of the terminal window.  I wanted to change that by applying a GUI based GIS tool called QGIS to the process and creating a scenery using just QGIS.

QGIS is free, open source, and powerful.  It wraps the ugly commands required for GIS experts to manipulate python libraries that do serious crunching of data.

I want most anyone who has is willing to take the time and patience to be able to create a scenery, not just the elite technical experts.  So, I've done the hard work (had to do it anyhow) and I know how to write a comprehensive tutorial for how to do it, so that's what I'm doing.  Frankly, I pretty much HAD to write a tutorial because I went down so many blind alleys trying to find alternative ways to use QGIS from the online information I found that it was hard to track my steps even when I was successful!

A huge shout out to the Condor scenery forum community.  In particular to Dave Regula and use prstzel for providing step by step details for how to do this.  Dave gave me at least two hours of time on the phone to discuss the challenges.  And numerous other contributors who have been at this for the better part of a decade to reverse engineer the Condor scenery process.

The internet is truly an amazing thing.  I never would have found out what I needed to know if it didn't exist.  I've scoured every corner of every scenery, QGIS, and GIS forum.  I've posted questions and gotten answers crucial to my search.  And the tools were all free.

Think of that.  The USGS puts 1 meter aerial photography online and you can download it for FREE.  All you need is bandwidth and time.  The crucial libraries - called 'gdal' are free.  They're written by people smarter than you and I put together and they're put out there for free.  I just use them and they work.  The QGIS tool is also free and developed as an open source tool just for my use.  Amazing.

And Google spreadsheets is free.  I needed a tool to do some calculations for me and found myself wondering if a browser based spreadsheet had the power and accuracy to calculate decimal degrees down to the 15th significant digit.  Turns out it can do that and much, much more.  I wanted to provide users with a tool that 1) didn't cost any money; 2) did all of the hard work of calculating scenery and tile sizes for free; and Google spreadsheets does that.  For free.

Fifteen years ago, this project would have been flat out impossible.  The cost of the photography alone would have been prohibitive and the georeferencing required would have driven you batty.  Today, from my house, I can create a photorealistic scenery of my soaring are in just a matter of, say two weeks.  Unbelievable.

Oh yeah, and I can't wait to actually fly a task on it!

Powered flight vs. soaring

I learned to fly powered aircraft in the 1980's.  I'm closing in on 400 flights in my soaring logbook vs. the 130 hours or so of powered flight (all single engine piston) I have.  When people ask me about learning to fly, I find myself recommending that they first learn to fly gliders, then powered aircraft if they want to continue on.  They inevitably ask me whether glider pilots are 'better' than power pilots.

That's a question that I think doesn't really have an answer.

Recently, an article on AOPA's site got me thinking about powered vs. motorless flight.  Taking paying passengers for flights at our club has exposed me to many different type of people, some of whom are pilots.  I've flown air transport pilots, helicopter pilots, private pilots, people with a lot of Flight Simulator time, and of course, other glider pilots.  I usually offer to let them fly after we're at a safe altitude and they'll often take me up on it.  

The glider pilots, even if they haven't flown for years, are always immediately at home.  It must be like riding a bike.  The power pilots vary in skill, though.  No matter how much you warn them, the first turn results in a yaw and slip and it often doesn't get a whole lot better from there.  At first I smugly thought that it was simply that glider pilots are 'better' (i.e. more skilled) than our powered brethren, but after seeing the same pattern repeated a number of times, I don't think that's the case at all.

I've heard the theory that glider pilots are somehow better because we actually use the rudder to counteract adverse yaw, we practice endless steep turns climbing in thermals, we're more in touch with the sky, the clouds, the wind, etc.  All of those things are true, but only because unless you pay attention to them, you're going to have some very short rides, which is no fun.  If you spend much time in a glider, you quickly get tuned into the variables of success for soaring flight.

So, I think it's not a matter of skill, it's a matter or necessity.  If you want to say a glider pilot flies better than a power pilot, I suggest you qualify it by adding 'when the engine quits'.  Even so, it may not be true.  I've read articles about pilots that cite the fact that the pilot has a glider certification as being a success factor in dead stick landing the aircraft.  I'm not entirely sure about that, though.

A powered aircraft with an engine out and a windmilling propeller probably has a glide ratio of 6:1 rather than the 22:1 of the low performance Schweizer 2-33.  I've never flown a glider that has a 6:1 ratio unless you want to count the times I've been in a full forward slip with the spoilers open and I'm not sure that's even 6:1, so I don't think soaring experience is particularly helpful there.  If it happened to me, I'd probably pick out a field too far away because I overestimated the glide performance of the aircraft.

After much thought I've come to the conclusion that it's an apples to oranges comparison.  It's like sailing and power boating.  Being a good sailboat captain doesn't make you a good power boat captain because the circumstances and decisions that have to be made are sufficiently different that only the basics transfer.  It's the same for aviation.  Being a good power pilot doesn't make you a good soaring pilot and vice versa.  They're different. 

For example, most people think that flying a glider is simpler than flying power because there's no engine.  I've had plenty of passengers ask me if I've ever flown a 'real' airplane, by which they mean one with an engine.  It's a natural question because piston aircraft have a LOT of stuff crammed on the panel and it looks more complicated than soaring.  However, much of that stuff is for navigation, communication, and monitoring the engine.  As long as nothing is wrong with the engine, the pilot can concentrate on flying.  Go up?  Add power, pull back stick.  Go up in a glider?  Seek out sources of lift, center it, concentrate during the climb, decide where to find more before leaving the thermal.

Is that simpler or more complicated than flying a powered aircraft?  Neither.  It's a very different set of decisions and actions.  It may be easy to climb and stay aloft in a powered aircraft, but a glider pilot doesn't have to adjust mixture, fly a course, hold an altitude, etc.  It's different.

That's why I've changed my mind about the power pilots vs. glider pilot question.  Power pilots may fly sloppy when I let them have the controls in my glider, but I've got hundreds of flights and hours of practice flying that very machine in a manner that is completely foreign to them.  They don't counteract adverse yaw because the machines they fly don't exhibit it to nearly the same degree as gliders do.  If they did, then power pilots would be better at it.  They'd also be better at steep turns in a thermal if they weren't required to add power to hold altitude and they practiced it on every single flight.

That doesn't make me better than them.  It's just different.

Updating the webcam

The current webcam looking at the flight line.

In July, our webcam went offline.  Usually, this is a relatively minor annoyance caused by a need to reset the computer.  The system we had is admittedly a hack of sorts, cobbled together using a donated Mini-ITX computer, Windows XP and a Logitech 9000 webcam.  I was actually surprised by how hardy the system was.  At first, the computer ran both the webcam and our weather station (more details here) but after several years, it became unstable and I switched the weather station over to a spare Sheeva Plug embedded Linux computer and a weather program called Meteoplug.  It's worked very reliably since then.

When the computer finally gave up the ghost, I decided that there was no need for a full Windows installation simply to run a webcam.  Between the security issues, the updates, and the cost, I saw no reason to get another full blown computer simply to take a picture and upload it to the web server.

The webcam computer.  No moving parts, small, under 5 watts.  Perfect.

I chose instead to use a $45 embedded Linux computer called a Raspberry Pi.  The Pi is perfect for this application because it is inexpensive, has no moving parts, uses a regular SD card for storage, and draws less than 5 watts of power.  It even has an hdmi output and runs a desktop GUI.  Amazing.

The Pi is a hobbyist's experimental computer and runs Debian Linux.  I started by trying a program called Motion and it worked perfectly.  I'd been very worried I'd have to muck with numerous settings just to find the webcam, but I plugged it in and it started working right away.  However, I did have to monkey with the settings to switch it to take a single photo every 2 minutes.  The program is actually much more powerful than that -it can detect motion, upload a timelapse, notify you, etc.  The array of options is actually a bit dizzying.

I then entered a loop where I tried to use the auto-upload feature of Motion to send a photo to our server, but ran into problems troubleshooting that, and further, with permissions on the files even to get it to do something as simple as starting up when the system reboots (in case of power failure).

In the end, an epic misinterpretation of the wput command is what burned up most of my time and troubleshooting the problem at the glider field just wasn't working.  I had to get a webcam (thanks Wade!) and take the setup home so I could spend some quality time with it.

I finally ended up using a simpler program called fswebcam.  There are plenty of tutorials for how to set this up for the Pi.  Here's the two that helped me most:  http://blog.davidsingleton.org/raspberry-pi-webcam-a-gentle-intro-to-crontab/ and http://www.r3uk.com/index.php/38-tech-tips/software/100-webcam-capture-using-fswebcam.  I owe both of those bloggers a lot.  There are a number of other tutorials out there, so your mileage may vary.

I've used Linux enough to know my way around it a bit, but it is such a struggle to get it to do the simple stuff sometimes.  I spent the majority of my time on this project A) trying to get the wput command to work properly; B) trying to get CRON to startup Motion automatically on reboot.  Because I never solved the startup issue with Motion (although I knew what the problem was), I switched to fswebcam.  (Hint: if you want to use Motion for your install, make sure you are aware that it installs as ROOT rather than user and install accordingly!  Otherwise, you run into all kinds of problems reading the config file, writing the images, and just starting up the service.  You have been warned.)

No matter, it is FINALLY up and running now and feeding a beautiful picture to the server, just like it did before the original computer broke down.  Phew!

  

Flying Mifflin with the Juniors

Junior Joe McGill over Mifflin County airport

I had two new soaring experiences this week.  First, I chaperoned our Junior members to Mifflin County Airport and second, I flew a glider at a new soaring location.  

It was all part of a trip our Juniors take every couple of years when the coffers are full enough to support a trip away.  We always talk about how much the Senior members give to the Junior program but in truth, the Junior members give a lot, too.  Sometimes it is nice to just get away from the Hill and have an event dedicated solely to the Juniors that can be all about them.

This is a challenging event to plan.  We have to have everything come together on the same weekend - airplanes, instructors, tow plane -and weather.  The past several years, the weather has not cooperated and we've had to cancel.  There is no rain date for this trip, either.  It's just too hard to ask everyone to reorganize their life and slip the trip by a week.

As we went into the week prior, the weather forecast was not looking good.  We were going to have to cancel for the 4th year!  We decided to wait until the day before to make the call.  Even then, the weather was not promising.  We'd get wet for sure at some point and would probably not be able to fly the world famous Mifflin ridge.

The Juniors were still game for it, though.  They'd been through past cancellations and were chomping at the bit to go *somewhere* that would be just for them.  We decided to plan for the worst weather but hope for the best.  Our contingent of gliders rolled into Mifflin on Friday with partly sunny skies overhead and predictions of thunderstorms.

We assembled (not trivial, considering we had both a 2-33 and 1-26 with us) and started flying.  After about 2 hours, the buildups to the southwest began heading towards us and we tied everything down and went inside.  The rain lasted less than an hour and cleared out to sunny skies again.  We resumed flying and had great weather for the rest of the day!  We had multiple instructional flights in the 2-33 and ASK-21, solo flying in the 1-26, fantastic ridge flights in the Duo Discus and I also brought the single seat Discus for some fun.

A group of happy and exhausted Juniors went to bed with another uncertain forecast the next day.

Low clouds and fog greeted us Saturday and it took a while, but finally cleared around lunchtime and turned into one of the nicest soaring days you can imagine.  Light winds with thermals and a slight bit of ridge lift.  The day steadily improved and even after 6pm we were still finding lift and thermals.

Altogether, we flew 40 flights Saturday and about 20 on Friday.  Unfortunately, the rains came Sunday and we called it early, having to disassemble and trailer the gliders in the rain before heading home.  Everyone was a trooper and we arrive back at Harris Hill Sunday evening, wet, tired, and happy.

What I Learned

1.  The Juniors just loved it.  It really didn't matter what happened.  More than anyone else at Harris Hill, they experience soaring as a group.  They are able to learn as a unit and they push each other along to keep improving.  They had fun when the sun was shining, they had fun when it was raining.  And they particularly enjoyed being the center of attention on the gliderport.

2.  When flying in a strange location, be sure the GPS is working.  I flew two flights in the Discus.  The first was short, just out to the ridge and back when I couldn't find any lift.  The second was better, a bit under an hour.  But I learned the most from the first flight.  Tim Welles told us the 'ridge was working at about about 50 knots' and I found out that was true.  I was able to poke along down the ridge for 2-3 miles but realized that I might not be able to poke my way back, so I turned around.

Mistake number 1, I turned downwind and fell off the lift.  I fell off enough that I was uncomfortable putting the glider back over the peak because I didn't want to get trapped on the other side by turning into the wind.  That's fine, but I probably wouldn't have fallen out of the lift if I'd turned into the wind.

Mistake number 2, in unfamiliar terrain, practice spotting the airport before you fly away from it.  When I turned around, I couldn't find the airport in the patchwork of farm field and roads.  Fortunately, I had the GPS on and I flew the course line to return, but I didn't actually spot the airport until I was below 1,000 AGL.  It sort of hid among the corn fields and I was seriously assessing if I was going to have to land close by and then explain to everyone how I was too stupid to see it from the air.

On the second flight, I picked some geographic landmarks and some buildings on the ground to help me find the airport and didn't have any trouble after that.  But there was that momentary 'oh crap' moment when I thought I'd made a real bonehead mistake.

3.  The people at Mifflin couldn't be nicer.  It is so great for our Juniors to meet others in the soaring community and find that they are such gracious hosts.  Mifflin Soaring Association really put themselves out for us and let us take over their clubhouse for the weekend and camp on their land.  Fred Winter of MSA contacted me to offer the use of the clubhouse right out of the blue and Brian Glick was our tow pilot and host extraordinaire.  It looks like a lot of fun to hang out at the airport and see what everyone is doing all the time.  A special shout out to Gary Wilson, who tracked us down and gave us the key to his T-hangar so we could have a dry place to dissassemble our gliders.  Boy did that come in handy!  Gary got a case of beer for his generosity.

4.  Harris Hill is like landing on an aircraft carrier compared to Mifflin.  We were all joking about using only 1/3 of the runway for landing and still having a lengthy roll out to get to the launch point.  I'd been told that if I can land at the Hill, I can land anywhere and I'm glad I have experience on the shorter HH runway.  It made landing an absolute cinch.

What a great trip.  Everyone enjoyed it and we managed to get out to dinner and ice cream in State College as well as have some of the best fresh-picked sweet corn I've ever had, thanks to Brian's brother.

Can't wait to do it again.  After I rest up, that is.

Local cross country - what a blast!

A quick post on my latest cross country flight on July 5th. 

I didn't arrive real early at Harris Hill because it was pretty blue early in the day.  The forecast was for good soaring, but I just wasn't leaving town in the blue.  If it stayed blue, my plan was to fly locally.

That's essentially what I did, although I ended up putting 75 miles on the logger and flew for just over 3 hours.  I assembled the Discus and took off around 1pm.  The other cross country guys were about 45 minutes ahead of me but I wasn't going to fly with them anyway, so I took my time and set up a local task - Corning, Cowanesque, Millerton and back.  This is a pretty short task but further than I've flown before.  Depending on the conditions, you are about 1 thermal away from Harris Hill.  Today, conditions were good enough to glide back in most cases.

The closest to trouble I got was the first leg to Corning.  I got there with no problem at lots of excess altitude to return but the leg to Cowanesque was pretty blue - few clouds.  I decided to head north and try out some of the clouds over the high ground thinking that I could either hang around Corning until conditions were better or gain enough altitude to set off for Cowanesque.

Turns out the clouds to the north weren't awesome, either.  I slowly hooked back to the Northeast and when I started to get low, turned for Harris Hill.  This is where the glide computer does such a great job for you.  I was able to decide how long to hang around and when to turn back.  I got back to the field and worked the ridge with a 2-33 hoping for a thermal.  After awhile, I found one and before long, I was back to 7,400 feet.  I decided to head straight to Cowanesque rather than return to Corning first.  With that much altitude, I could pretty much glide there and back.

The clouds were pretty good out there now, and I turned around at Cowanesque at about 6,000 feet and plugged Millerton into the computer.  I proceeded cautiously, stopped for altitude when it seemed good, and arrived there at around 6,000 feet again.  I wasn't going for speed and I flew a moderate 70kts most of the time, except for areas of deep sink when I sped up.  

Turning Millerton, I knew I had Harris Hill easily made, so I headed out to the east of Elmira and thought I might work my way up towards Watkins Glen.  Northeast of Elmira, I could only get to 5,500 feet and the clouds were beginning to dry up.  I decided not to go too much further up and returned to Harris Hill.

This was a nice flight for me.  I flew further away than I ever have and it's true that I chickened out and returned to the Hill instead of pressing on, but I did put some good mileage on the glider and for my skill and experience level, I definitely made progress and learned a lot on this flight.  I fly because I get enjoyment out of it and this flight was a blast! 

Is it possible to have a 'tin ear' for thermals?

If so, I may have one.  Or maybe not.  It's hard to say.

This weekend I was the commercial pilot on duty and shared a thermal with our club's Duo Discus on a couple of occasions.  The first time, he started lower than I did and passed me up in the thermal.  Now, granted, the pilot was one of our guys who does a lot of racing so his skill level is higher than mine and he has more stick time than I do for sure so maybe it's not a fair comparison.

And, I was with a passenger.  Having cleaned up vomit in the cockpit before, let's just say I'm careful about circling with passengers!  But this passenger didn't mind and I kept checking to make sure he was okay.  So maybe it doesn't count so much.

I guess what bothered me most was that I had hold of the thermal and was on about the third circle without successfully centering it all the way around.  The Duo joined us, circled a couple of times, then seemed to move about 1/4 of a mile away and started a similar circle where the lift was stronger.  I sighed and moved over there.  Sure enough, the lift was better over there.

How did he know?  Luck?  I doubt it.

The second time the Duo appeared about 200 feet below me in a thermal and quickly made it up to my altitude but then was unable to outclimb me.  We circled and rose at approximately the same rate.  I suppose the lift could have been stronger below me and weaker where I was.  Or, I just got more competitive and attuned as the Duo got closer.

Or, I just adopted the Duo's circling pattern and managed to match his rate of climb.

I also made a discovery as we were circling at the same altitude.  It may APPEAR that the guy on the other side of the circle is climbing but what may be happening is that you are flattening out or descending.  I realized this as I exited what I thought was the weaker side of the thermal and watched the Duo enter the same air.  He appeared to catch an updraft and moved from even with the horizon to slightly above it.

How could that be?!  I had JUST BEEN THERE and there and the lift was weak over there.  How could he be climbing?  After a moment, I entered the same spot he was in, expecting to get lift the same as he did but didn't really get much.  I glanced over to the Duo and realized we were even in altitude again.  Since I didn't climb, he must have descended.

Eventually, he exited the thermal at my altitude after another minute or two.  The contest was a draw, except that I started higher then he did and he ended up at my altitude but couldn't climb above me.

Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me and perhaps it is just a part of my learning process.  I'm an okay pilot, I can certainly stay in the air and don't come down any more frequently than anyone else, but I want to be better than that.  I understand the process of finding the lift and centering it.  I've concentrated on trying to center it quickly, within 1-2 turns.  I can usually do that and when I've had trouble, other pilots tell me that they've had similar trouble, so I know I'm at least average at thermal hunting and centering.

What I'm lacking, perhaps, is the search element of thermaling.  I try to lock on to the best lift in a thermal.  I'm not afraid to move my circle around to try to find it.  I vary my bank angle to find the best lift.  All good, but I would NOT have decided to move my circle a full quarter mile away to see if there was stronger lift over there.  I would think that would be a waste of time.  The conditions were blue and there was nothing to indicate even the size of the lift area, like the size of the cloud above.  Still, he moved over there and that was better.

Did he observe in other thermals that the lift was better northeast of the main thermal?  Was it simply luck?  It's hard to say and that makes it harder to learn.

Perhaps a ride with a cross country instructor would help.  Or maybe just some more practice.