Ed Levin Speed Gliding
June 7 - 9
Ed Levin Speed Gliding Meet----------------------------------------
The Ed Levin Speed Gliding meet will be June 7, 8, and 9, as scheduled. Friday the 7th is a practice day; Saturday and Sunday the 8th and 9th will be official sanctioned rounds.
Rules will be published in the next week. The course is under develoment and will be finalized the weekend before the meet. Its particulars will be announced at that time. I can say already that the course will require a high degree of maneuvering, and will hold somewhere between 12 and 15 pylons. It will, however, take a reasonably steep spine as its basic courseline, so speeds will be good.
Speed Gliding as a discipline has long suffered from crippling logistical issues, among them the need to operate in completely still air, and the de facto need for competitors to ballast up to either the non-penalzed limit or the "sweet spot" of the area-loading penalty curve. Past meets have broken ground in some key areas, notably the WOR Super-G 2000 which creatively approached the same-launch-point issue for early morning switching launch conditions (with an "energy control" gate preceeding a far-off "time-start gate"), and the LMFP Nationals in 2001 by proving concept via aerotow. Much more innovation must be applied before Speed Gliding meets can be reliably undertaken to the point that certainty allows media to be included in the scene, and to the point that safety is assured.
Accordingly, the 2002 Ed Levin meet (which due to its serpentine topology will be called either "The WOR Sidewinder" or "The WOR Timber Rattler," and we'll decide that soon) will attempt to do more than simply provide SGNTSS points to competitors. It will serve the sport in a larger sense, in that it will attempt to "prove concept" in some additional key and ground-breaking ways. We will be running the course throughout the day; wind speeds of ~8mph or less will not stop competition. We are facilitating this by designing a course that does not require close ground or obstacle proximity, and by designing required maneuvers that do not reward same.
Be prepared to place your glider precisely where you have to. Be prepared to see a course that cannot be run "perfectly," and to be faced with a variety of decisions on which way to run the course, and to have to choose how to be wide here or slow there so as to be tight or fast somewhere else. Be prepared to have to do things differently than you may have had to do them before, and to see rules you hae not seen before. The most expensive or most tweaked-out gear may or may not win this race, we're not sure. But the best pilotting and best course analysis will. Bring both and be unstoppable. Be prepared.
Again, specifics of rules will be released soon.
I am trying to get costs down to very little, for both SGNTSS and Sport-class competitors (and the two will be run as one class but scored as two). Some questions I have for competitors: Is cash prize money important to you? If so I will have to raise the rates, because I can just barely cover costs at about $35 a head. Are trophies important? Is a very low entry fee important? Let me know now.
I would also like to know who is coming. Please email me DIRECTLY as I do NOT get the Speed Gliding email list (nor do I want to at present; it clogs my business email inbox).
Please discuss QUICKLY and get back to me. I need to finalize all loose ends in the next couple of days. Give yor input and accept what decisions fall out, or lose your chance to influence things and again accept what decisions fall out. Above all, plan to come and fly your arse off, because as I said this is a pilot's race, and the most inspired flying will win the meet, guaranteed.
- Mike Vorhis
mike@vorhis.com <-- send replies to this address!
PS. We will be running paragliding heats too. They will run while the HGs are breaking down. This should be a hoot. Nobody quite knows what to expect of them, including themselves, but we'll see.
PPS. I would like to hear from the following people especially:
Chris Arai
Jim Lee
Rob Kells
Ken Brown
John Borton
Reto Schaerli
Paris Williams
Scott Angel
Scot Trueblood
Aaron Swepston
Steve Alford
Henry Bittner
Alan Kenny
Chris Giardina
Andy Whitehill
Ray Leonard
GW MEadows
Dennis Pagen
Mark Lilledhal
Dave Jacob
Jack Axaopolous
Mark Mulholland
Anyone else who failed to pop into my head as I type this (and I apologize if so, but I've been out of the SG circulation for a while and don't have time to pull out lists)
Anyone interested at all, whether you have run speed before or not.
I don't have these email addresses, or am not sure about some of them, so pass this info along to these people please:
Chris Arai
Jim Lee
Paris Williams
Jack Axaopolous
Andy Whitehill
Mark Lilledhal
John Borton
Ray Leonard
Dennis Pagen
Anyone I have missed
Anyone at all