http://gravsports.blogspot.com/

Despite the sprinkles in the morning and the general air of, "No
way in hell we're going flying," all of a sudden we're up on top of the hill as
the air clears out.


Launched and spent the next 45 minutes doing circles at cloud base with the
entire field--it was an individual start, and nobody wanted to go first. I think
individual starts in paragliding are stupid, and this idiocy was compounded
today by the fact that there were no points for leading or departure, so
basically everyone was waiting at base for people to leave so the field could
use the early pilots as thermal markers.


There was some poetic justice in that the gaggle that waited for most of the
field to get on course didn't make goal as the day shut down. This puts most of
the "top" pilots in a points hole for the rest of the meet. I have to laugh,
what we call the "pimps" were owned today.


Individual starts, especially using the old GAP system without leading or
departure points as we did today, annoy the hell out of me.


It's called racing, not dicking about endlessly... Another reason people often
want individual starts is to "reduce congestion," but all that ends up happening
normally is that the entire field circles above launch waiting for someone else
to start.


The FAI/pilot politics continue, there are soap operas to be written about all
of that. I'm starting to feel that perhaps big PG comps are missing out on the
best parts of flying.