Audi Soaring Competition 2017

7–15 January 2017

BY ROSS GADDES

Flying up the Coromandel Peninsula prior to landing back at Thames (just for fun with Maurie in the PW5)

On Sunday 15 January 2017 we packed up and finalised our nine day annual club event (normally called the Drury Comps).

In July last year Graham Player and I decided that we would organise another Drury Competition in early January 2017. This allowed us plenty of time to prepare. The Drury Comps have been held at Drury on and off for several decades. They have always been aimed at promoting cross country and competition within our local club membership, but had died a little up until January 2011 when we revived the event. Initially I tried to get a few outside the club interested in visiting Drury by convincing them they needed to sample yet another crosscountry site. I don’t think Drury had ever been considered as such (by other clubs) being so near to Auckland and the two coasts.

The 2011 contest (etched firmly in the memory of those that attended) with nine continuous days of not just good, but excellent, soaring weather provided fantastic soaring and racing. With many days having light or favouring easterly winds we got to fly down the west side of Hamilton and as far as Taupo, regularly racing over 350 km and there was only one land-out during the entire event. This encouraged us to apply for and run the Club Class Nationals in 2015. These also proved very successful but last year we had a break as many were primed up to support the Multi-Class Nationals being held in Taupo 2016. This year I was quite happy to help host a low-key event so I wasn’t panicking about organising too much.

After attending the disastrous South Island Regionals (weather wise) I was very impressed by the prize giving presentation, given by Justin Wills, who was talking about the different and successful approaches to some competitions being held in the UK. In particular, the Enterprise idea seemed to fit our objectives for our traditional club event. After discussing it with Graham Player (Contest Director) we made a decision to run with this format. It’s fair to say I really only had the basic idea on how the format operates and needed to spend some time on calls with Justin Wills. The key idea (to me at least) is that it’s the not just the competition but about providing lots of fun – in the air and on the ground – for the competitors and the supporters. Justin has attended a huge number of UK Enterprise comps and has brought the idea to Omarama as well. My plan was to use the ideas loosely and not get too excited about exactly emulating the concept, which is actually very simple. The idea is to encompass a huge range of ability and glider types so that everyone can fly to their own level or better and hopefully provide challenges in a supportive environment. All competitions do this to some extent but the enterprise format focusses on getting the most soaring from the day.

With literally days to run, we were still pretty laid back about the event. It was about then that Simon Gault fired a hand grenade into the room which forced us to quickly get our act together. He approached Audi NZ who were quite excited about helping out and offered up a great 1st Prize – the use of a brand

The idea is to remove all those stressful and disappointing things about normal FAI style competition flying. We made a few mistakes and at times failed to explain tactics and strategy to those newer to the game.

new, high spec Audi Q7 SUV for one full week. We quickly re-named the event the ‘Audi Soaring Competition’. He then worked on the well-known company Cookie Time who offered to supply great day prizes. Another company interested in coming on board was Pilot Breweries, a Hamilton based craft beer company which is quickly growing in popularity.. Having an obvious leaning towards aviation, they proved to be a very good partner and, as we all know, beer is something most gliding clubs have an intimate relationship with. Simon also offered to design a very high quality meal for the final dinner and have it presented by his company – Sous Chef. This wasn’t going to be cheap and I have to admit I wasn’t quite sure how this would all play out but Graham and I went along with open minds. It also fitted the concept, in that it would hopefully appeal to partners and friends as much, maybe more, than the pilots themselves; an important idea that Justin had also impressed on us as we listened to his after-dinner speech in Omarama.

It was all a bit late to attract those from outside our club, especially with the added spice of the prizes, but I did ring around with personal invites. With only a few days to go and only a handful entered, I had to do some lobbying and counting because I knew quite a few were interested. This lateness was entirely my fault and I guess it was due to the laid back lead up prior to Christmas. As the weather improved and with it some positive thoughts, we eventually had 22 pilots entered and only one that was not from our club, that being Ian O’Keefe from Auckland Aviation Sports Club. This number of participants was actually about as many as we could handle, despite many intending to fly only a few days or in twin seat gliders from the club fleet. We quickly tried to arrange a second tow plane which did not prove to be easy. It was also not easy to get a reliable roster of tow pilots but Graham Cochrane and Dion Manktelow both worked hard to ensure we would at least have CEB online. We also decided that the winch would be acceptable if only one tow plane was operating.

The Enterprise concept supports a relaxed launch operation but the numbers and the weather proved to be a challenge,

something we need to work on next time for sure. Help was also sought from Marion Moody and Paula Wright who took on the task of supplying good quality, home-made morning teas, lunches and some of the dinners. Good value and very nourishing, the food was really appreciated. Another person who put in a fantastic effort was Greg Balle. Greg is a pre QGP pilot with a very valuable knowledge of weather and the various methods of predicting what might happen as the day and the week progressed. He also proved able to relay that information to the punters in a rational, understandable and professional presentation at briefing time.

Somehow we pulled together a pretty good team in time for the first day on the 7th Jan 2017. The first briefing required quite a lot of explaining. Having the concept is one thing but facing the crowd, now with much more ‘skin’ in the game, was daunting. Truth is, I was hoping it would all just fall into place; after all we could make our own rules. To keep everything as simple as possible the scoring was intended to be done by each pilot on their own score sheet. This didn’t really work but thanks to Dion Manktelow we sorted it out and Arnulf put the results on Soaring Spot as well. The idea is that there would be one point per km, divided by the glider handicap (GNZ list), to get the distance points. Extra points could be earned by achieving certain goals, hopefully enterprising ones. These goals can be turnpoints or areas (like AAT areas). Landing at the airfield would usually attract extra points as well. I also appeased those who liked racing by putting a time on the kilometres achieved, so the distance points would stop at a defined time after starting. Starting was not by grid but at the pilot’s choice at any time after the briefing and Controlled Airspace was accessible without penalty. The idea is to remove all those stressful and disappointing things about normal FAI style competition flying. We made a few mistakes and at times failed to explain tactics and strategy to those newer to the game. We also failed to get people in the air in an acceptable time frame which will be better next time I promise. Everyone was entered onto the OLC so that the flights could be loaded into an accessible place