Paris Williams <<pariswilliamsphd>>
writes:

Taking in the big picture: Those who have flown with me
since my earlier competition days (beginning in the mid-late ‘90s), may recall
that my old pattern was to charge really hard--all or nothing. I took big risks,
nearly always led out (with or without anyone else), and won a lot of days but
also bombed a lot of days. I flew every day for that day alone, going for the
day wins and not really considering the larger picture of the entire
competition. On one hand, I had a lot of fun flying like this and did win a few
big meets. On the other hand, I also bombed a lot of meets and found myself
riding one hell of an emotional roller coaster as I repeatedly went from hero to
zero and back again.

Now coming back into the sport after taking some years off, I’ve reconsidered my
general strategy. I’m trying to look at the competition more in its entirety
now, holding back the reins a little more as I focus on flying more consistently
and taking more calculated risks. I think it’s this shift in my attitude that
paid off for me at the Nationals. The meet was almost entirely blue and windy,
with climbs significantly lower, more broken and weaker than we typically have
at Forbes. I think my old "pedal to the metal" strategy would have been a
serious mistake.

Risk Management: We flew 7 out of 8 days at this meet, and many of the
days were moderately to very difficult, with no clouds, light/broken lift, and
low tops. As I mentioned above, this was definitely a meet to take in the big
picture and fly consistently. There were only a few of us who made goal every
day, with the exception of one day in which nobody made goal, where Mike Bilyk
and I tied for second behind Carl Wallbank who tends to excel on these kinds of
days. I worked hard on pulling in the reins and doing my best to stay with other
pilots. I generally stayed in lift longer and skipped weak lift less frequently
than I ordinarily do.

Learning to tolerate the gaggle: One thing I’ve always struggled with is
serious gaggle aversion. While many other pilots suffer from "gaggle suck,"
always being drawn to other gliders and gaggles, I’ve suffered from the opposite
affliction, often avoiding and leaving gaggles even when they were likely in the
best lift in the area. In my opinion, to be a good gaggle pilot, you need to
ride a fine line between being somewhat assertive (not allowing others to push
you out of the lift, and being prepared to turn inside someone when they fade a
little too far from the core) and being blatantly inconsiderate and even
dangerous (forcing people out of the core, etc.).

While pilots who utilize the latter strategy generally do quite well in gaggles
(I’m not mentioning any names here), they risk alienating themselves from others
both in the air and on the ground. Personally, I’ve tended to be a little too
far on the considerate side ("sure, come on in, there’s room for all of us in
this core…," "I’ll drop beneath you so we can both have our own space and climb
more effectively…," etc.) as well as the untrustworthy side (keeping the bar
pulled in when below people to avoid climbing up through them, since I’m worried
they won’t get out of the way).

The problem with this is that by trying to minimize conflict in this way, my
general pattern has been to not do so well in the gaggles, especially the dense
ones. On the other hand, having as much experience as I do, I’m usually pretty
good at quickly centering up on the core and maximizing my climb, so when I’m on
top, I usually find it relatively easy to stay on top, and when I come in
beneath other gliders, I usually climb up to them fairly quickly—but then I run
into that little problem of catching up to the others but then not being
comfortable climbing through them when the opportunity presents itself…

Because of the relatively weak, blue conditions, this meet was definitely a
gaggle meet, and it forced me to (a) resist my impulse to avoid and run away
from gaggles, and (b) to be a little more assertive in the gaggles (while still
not compromising my personal values to the point of being an inconsiderate
prick). No doubt, I still have a lot more work to do in this arena.

I’m really glad to see the up and coming "young guns": It’s been
disappointing to watch the number of competitors dwindle and age over the years.
But my hope for the sport has been renewed as I’ve had the privilege to fly with
a number of up and coming "young guns"—such as Jonas Lobitz, Mike Bilyk, and
Glen McFarlane (who’s a little less young than the others but flying great for a
relatively new comp pilot). I was particularly impressed with Mike’s flying at
this comp, considering he’s only competed in 4 comps prior to this one(!)

It no doubt helped that he’s light on his glider, as climbing well was so
important given the conditions that we had, but he’s also clearly a very
talented thermaler. I witnessed that his strategy was to essentially latch on to
the more experienced pilots (usually me during this comp) and minimize risks by
avoiding leading out himself, which I found mildly frustrating at times since I
appreciate it when others share this risk and fly more collaboratively, but
given his experience level and the difficult conditions we had, who can blame
him? I’m sure that with time, he’ll gain the experience he needs to become more
confident leading out and flying on his own when necessary, and that he’ll
eventually become a major asset to the U.S. team.

Regarding Jonas, I found it interesting how similar he and I are with regard to
decision making—no matter what happened, we nearly always ended up flying
together, and I found him a real pleasure to fly with—not afraid to lead out,
always fanning out on glide, and working really well with me and others to
quickly locate the strongest core. It’s a shame he landed just short of goal on
the last day, but given that he was less than 50 points behind first place, I
completely agree with his strategy to take some larger risks that day. I was
actually surprised that Mike didn’t take more risks himself (only 23 points
behind me for the lead), but I think this is one of those times where Jonas’s
extra experience and confidence revealed itself.

Having good equipment: Finally, there’s no doubt that having good
equipment is a very important factor in doing well at a meet like this one. I
was flying a 2012 model Combat GT 13.2, the same model I flew in Florida two
years ago so it is slightly outdated (not having the most recent rib templates,
etc.), but still doing just fine (better than fine) in this field. One thing
that I’ve come to love about the Combats is their ability to thermal nearly
hands off—simply set the bank angle and let it go, so even though I was flying
4-6 hours every day for 7 out of 8 days, I didn’t struggle at all with muscle
fatigue.

However, the Combats do seem to prefer a slightly steeper bank angle than the
Moyes RX's (based on what I observed of others), so I did experience a little
incompatibility in the denser gaggles in that I had to work a little to maintain
the flatter bank angles which most other pilots here seemed to want to fly at
(since about 80% of the field was flying the same glider—the Moyes RX).

Given that my model (2012) is approaching two years old, I was surprised to see
how well I was gliding against most of the field, especially at the higher
speeds. While most of us appeared to be gliding very similarly at the low and
mid-range speeds, I clearly had an advantage over much of the field at the
higher speeds (above about 45mph/75kph); but unfortunately, because of the
weather conditions at this meet, we didn’t do a whole lot of flying at the
higher speeds, and so I didn’t have the opportunity to use this advantage as
much as I would have liked.

I will say that I flew all but the last day with ballast, so this likely played
some role in my particularly good glide performance. I actually would have
preferred to remove the ballast to sacrifice some glide for better climb, but as
I fly in a second-hand harness not specifically designed for me, I have some CG
issues with it (my head floats up when I remove the ballast which sits above my
shoulders), so I had to leave the ballast in. Towards the end of the meet,
however, someone told me of a way that I could fairly easily modify my harness
to solve the CG problem, so I gave this a go and was able to remove the ballast
on the last day, which was another weak, blue, windy day.

I did notice an improvement in my climbing, and I still had a good high speed
glide (though somewhat less than what I had with the ballast), as was made clear
when I was able to outrace Mike Bilyk (flying a Moyes RX) into goal by a few
seconds on final glide.

One final word about the Combat models—the Combats come not only in a range of
sizes but also in a range of aspect ratios (higher aspect ratios generally have
the benefit of improving overall performance but make the glider generally
handle and behave like a larger glider than you would expect for the given sail
area). To date, they have just one super-high aspect Combat on the market—the
13.5 (with an 8.5 aspect ratio)—which I flew at the Worlds and was absolutely
delighted with the climb and glide performance.

However, it is definitely a little big for me (I weigh 69kg/150lb), and while I
found the handling just fine when flying on my own, I was struggling a bit with
it in the dense gaggles (when having to do a lot of evasive maneuvering). Aeros
has recently been putting a lot of effort into developing a smaller high aspect
ratio glider (a 12.7, with an 8.4 aspect ratio), but unfortunately, it wasn’t
ready in time for Forbes, which is why I flew the 13.2. If only I had the 12.7
at Forbes, who knows, maybe I could have taken a day off ;-)

Anyway, the expectation is that the 12.7 will be ready in time for the PreWorlds
in about six weeks, and then ready for the market shortly after that. Aeros is
also preparing to unsheathe their fully-carbon option (which I believe will be
available for most sizes) hopefully in time for the PreWorlds (with full
oval-shaped as well as conical-shaped carbon leading edges and even carbon
sprogs and synthetic sprog cables—the oval/conical shape allows for a maximal
balance of high performance and good handling). I can’t wait!