team captain

Team Captain’s observations.

After 16 days on end finally a break for me on today’s declared (and deserved) rest day.
During all 7 practice days and the first 6 days of the  contest  we have had good to excellent flying conditions.
Yesterday the open class broke the 100MPH barrier... Only in Uvalde, TX can we expect this kind of strong and consistent soaring weather.
The heat and the intensity of  this modern days contest flying take its toll. In this contest it is once again very clear that weather forecasting has come a long way and precise tasking is almost possible.
Our weather team (so far) has done an excellent job and the predicted “tasking to the max” has almost been achieved. The only difficulty at this contest site is the degree and timing of over development (thunderstorms) and the speed of the always present  sea breeze front moving inland from the Gulf during the afternoon. Thursday’ s task  turned out too short and racing ended too soon as the OD from the North and  the predicted early approach of the sea breeze did not happen as predicted.
Consequently  the task was set to the extreme on Friday  resulting in very late finishes (20:08) and land-outs.
After flying 4 WGC and 4 pre-worlds, this is my first try as a team captain and I have to confess that it  is totally different from my expectations. The last World contest I flew was Leszno, Poland in 2003 and things have changed a lot since.
At that time a team captain was a requirement, but only necessary in case of problems.
The CD made all the decisions in regards to procedures, tasks  and other issues. All in accordance with the current IGC rules.
What I see now is a far more democratic way of running a WGC.
Most days (including the practice days) there is a captains meeting (09:30) preceding the general pilot’s meeting at 10:15 Any team  pilot’s concerns, current procedures  and suggested changes are discussed
and pilot feedback taken into consideration.
In my humble opinion, this is the fairest  and most democratic way to help make these WGC fair to all concerned, while still complying with the IGC rules. (The Stewards are  present to enforce.)
One example (further to Jerzy’s remarks on the luck factor) is the start gate.
From practice day 1 on there was a concern about the start gate height limitation. With this limitation comes a  start speed limitation, preventing pilots to stay under the limit by speeding up.
Especially with a start line rather than a circle, this imposes a real danger of high speed “head-on” situations. After using both methods it came to a vote and the “no limit” procedure was chosen.
Another suggestion by CD, Ken Sorenson to be able to change tasks in the air (after the launch) in case of last minute weather changes, was turned down by the IGC as they thought there could be a language issue.

Yes there is a certain  luck factor, again referring to Jerzy’s flight from yesterday. Dave was one of the high starters, but later on in the flight went further into the second zone and ran into soft conditions, slowing him down considerably.
This is  one of the reasons  our gliding contests are several days(at regional’s) to almost two weeks at WGC.  It all evens out at the end.
As Charlie Spratt  concluded:” give them some contest flying days and the best will end  up at the top....”
Our team is basically working out OK. The volunteer crews, Dan Daly, Sonia Hildesheim and Joseph Laposnyik  are helping the pilots reduce the wear and tear on their spouses and giving them a chance to concentrate on their flying.
Hardware problems due to the extreme heat have been a real problem and the cause to some very tense tempers.
Jerzy had his ClearNav freeze up on day one causing a swap-out and re-programming of a second CN.
His second problem was an overheated Cambridge that only started after  the launch, taking away his chance for a back-up file.
All very frustrating and taking a toll on his concentration.
Nick also had a heat related logger failure and now uses a cooling pack before flight, to prevent this from happening again.

Ed Hollestelle
Team Captain