2 long days of flying and Assigned Area Tasks

Last couple of days were long and hard, particularly yesterday. The day before yesterday we had a 3 hour Assigned Area Task, so what's that??

Well, the normal gliding competition task is called a racing task, simply race around a pre-defined course using GPS points to define the course. However, this means you might end up not flying in the best part of the sky i.e. where the best weather conditions are. Also, normal racing tasks do not test your skill as a glider pilot to select the best route to fly through.

So a new task type called Assigned Area Task (AAT) was invented. This is quite complicated and many pilots are stressed out when these tasks are set, not us Brits of course because we practice them a lot..

So how does it work? The task setter will define two or more areas, normally circles, with radius say of 20 or 30 km, and a Task Time, say 3 or 4 hours. You then have to fly from the start into each area (in the correct order) as far as you want then fly into the next area and so on and then come back on or after the Task Time has elapsed. When you get back your flight trace is analysed and the scoring program works out your overall distance for the day and divides that by your flight time to give your average speed. The fastest speed wins the day.

Things to remember:

You can fly anywhere you want within the areas.

The Task Time is minimum so if you come back in 2 hours of the 3 you still score as if you flew for 3 hours.

The scoring program calculates your maximum distance in a straight line, not your overall distance flown, so it doesn't pay to fly in curve lines or circles for that matter :)