The weather is fair, medium winds though the area forecasts show possible gusts of up to 25kt at 1000ft.
Today's task is economy; crews are given 8kg (single seat) and 10kg (dual seat) of fuel. The aim is to fly as large a triangle as possible and return to the airfield with 2 litres of fuel remaining. Competitors are free to choose where they fly providing they follow a few rules such as 'fly in a clockwise direction' and, of course, avoid all prohibited airspace.
Each aircraft carries a GPS tracking device. On landing the crews hand their 'logger' into the scoring room and their track is downloaded and analysed. The loggers provide a lot of detail of the flight; altitude, speed and location, so it is possible to create virtual corridors through which crews have to fly or test their speed using timing gates.
This task includes some of those elements; the first side of the triangle is a speed leg with higher speeds attracting more points, the second is a slow leg. These aspects of task design help to level the field between the faster and the slower aircraft; after all, we are testing pilot skill and not the capability of the most expensive aeroplane. Competition history shows that the best pilots can win, even when they are up against much more capable machines...
No comments:
Post a Comment