by Tom Spiesser

OLC results for the southern hemisphere

• GCV: Most active cross-country club!
• Benalla: Largest non-commercial cross-country site!

Tables 1A and 1B below – taken straight from the Aerokurier Online Contest (OLC) website on 31 March – show what the whole world can see, what every glider pilot in the Northern Hemisphere can see. What an excellent result; from nowhere GCV has emerged as the No. 1 cross-country gliding club in the Southern Hemisphere and Benalla as the top non-commercial site, being outranked only by the 3 major commercial sites, Corowa, Bitterwasser and Gariep Dam.

Table 1A

Table 1B

I have decided to use 31 March as the cut-off point for the analysis because I am looking at the results from the perspective of glider pilots in the Northern Hemisphere and, if you follow the OLC site then it is clear that by early April they are well and truly focused on their own backyard, criss-crossing the Alps, flying in flat country, etc and recording up to 1,000 flights in a single day.

The purpose of this article is not to thank those members who provided the technical infrastructure and those who tirelessly hounded others to register their flights. I assume that the Committee will do so in good time and do a better job than I would in terms of not leaving out anyone. I would like to provide an analysis of what I or for that matter any other interested glider pilot can see on the OLC site and provide some of my insights and perspectives.

What about the other 300,000 km?

General consensus seems to be that still only around 50% of the distances flown out of Benalla are actually registered on the OLC, which I find quite disappointing. The response to my disappointment would be that the same would be happening everywhere else too. My answer to that is NO - you can rest assured that the owners of the 3 commercial sites would be exerting pressure on their paying customers to register their flights as they do actually understand the commercial marketing value of these statistics. Our friends in Corowa have done us a favour and listed their stats on their website. They reckon they have flown 570,000 km and 502,000 or 85% are actually registered on the OLC. Now, in a “what if” scenario, if we were to double our 286,000 registered km to 572,000 then you can see that we would be vying with Corowa for the title of the most active cross-country gliding site in Australia and in the Southern Hemisphere.

The No.1 club site

Looking at what is actually registered on the OLC, Benalla clearly is the No.1 club site in the Southern Hemisphere, by a fair margin. All three commercial sites which rank ahead of us are dreadfully expensive and financially outside the reach of most glider pilots. Nevertheless they serve their purpose and have their niche in the market. Two of those sites are in the deserts or semi-deserts of Southern Africa where the terrain is not particularly suited for outlandings. Bitterwasser, which would have to be one of the foremost long-distance sites in the world, has no facilities other than those on the farm itself and it takes some time for its gliding tourists to acclimatize themselves because it is as hot as Benalla, but located 1,500m above sea level and flying at cloud base on most days would require oxygen.

By contrast we fly in very landable terrain and Benalla is a town with large supermarkets and restaurants and bakeries and hardware shops and golf club and bowling club and, and, and... and when you step into the clubhouse in Benalla you are in a club, with the atmosphere of a club and that makes all the difference. So, that means we have a lot to offer, a lot to be proud of and a lot to preserve and maintain and grow.

Where do we stand as a club? Well if you look at Table 1A then the next most active club in the Southern Hemisphere is Club de Planeadores flying at Munivitacura in Chile. Their major asset is their location in the Andes which allows for excellent ridge soaring for large parts of the year, so they scrub up and down those mountains and clock up the distances. Interestingly around 73% of the flights at their site are by their own members and their members hardly fly anywhere else. For Benalla only 42 % of flights are undertaken by GCV members (however, see footnote to Table 2) and GCV members hardly fly anywhere else. This would seem to indicate that Benalla is a very popular site for both its members and for visitors. For Munivitacura the visitor percentage is much lower; I would imagine that the language barrier plays a role here.

That brings me to our nearest competitor for the top spot in Australia, the Darling Downs Soaring Club who were the No.1 last year when GCV was technologically still in the stone age and not quite up to registering flights on the OLC. I am told they issued a challenge to all other Australian clubs to try to knock them off their perch. Well, I guess that we can say that GCV has well and truly taken up the challenge. I know very little about Darling Downs so I can only interpret the statistics on the OLC site, as any other glider pilot would do, elsewhere in the world. What I see is a “wandering circus” (of pilots) who have flown 87,000 km, but only 56,000 of those at home in Jondaryan. The answer could well be weather-related and there seems to be a small group of active pilots who tour the country, participating in competitions and other events. Interestingly, there are hardly any non- Darling Downs pilots flying at Jondaryan.

By contrast, Table 2 shows who flies in Benalla. This is quite a different picture. GCV members only represent 48% of the distances flown and members of other Australian clubs represent 38% or 109,000 km, some 64,000 of which were flown during the Nationals by an average of 20 pilots per day among that group of contestants who actually registered their flights. This season therefore is not completely representative, but nevertheless it is fair to say that Benalla is host to a fair number of glider pilots from other Australian clubs, something which needs to be further encouraged. Overall, the analysis shows that Benalla is a very popular site, both among its own members who don’t see the need to fly elsewhere and among pilots from other parts of Australia and from overseas who see some attraction in coming to Benalla, be it the weather, the infrastructure or the Club atmosphere, or all of the above.

Table 2

Finally, Table 3 shows the GCV pilots who have clocked up the distances registered on the OLC. I have decided to list each and every pilot who has made a contribution, however small (as in my own case), for at least they have contributed. GCV members looking at this table should say to themselves first and foremost, “Ask not what your club can do for you but what you can do for your club” and then some of us should ask ourselves why our name is not on that list and others should ask, “is that all I flew this season and why didn’t I register all my flights?”

Table 3

Where to from here - the other 300,000km?

That raises the question how do we encourage our club members to log the other 50% of flights that are made out of Benalla? I hope that an article like this and a listing and a ranking will encourage more club members to participate. Those that have been pushing and encouraging others to register their flights this season will hopefully do so again next season. Their efforts have certainly been worth it as this year’s progress has shown!

I view our appearance and ranking on the OLC as the best marketing tool GCV has at its disposal. This applies to marketing to overseas pilots and to pilots from other clubs in Australia. As such I would encourage the Committee to treat the effort to increase our ranking on the OLC as a marketing exercise and not be afraid to let it cost the Club some money. There are 3 initiatives the Committee could undertake, two of which will cost some money and one of which would be free:

• Advertise this season’s success on our website, including the home page, using headlines and tables like those presented in this article - for free
• Award a number of relatively valuable prizes (e.g. 5 free aerotows) to a number of pilots according to one or more different criteria for flights registered on the OLC
• Acquire some more data loggers to complement the Volksloggers the club already owns. Make these available to pilots for free on a daily basis on the condition that they register their flights.

Let's explore item 3. Assume the club owns a dozen data loggers and they are available for free, subject to the flights being registered. Then you may still encounter apathy and comments such as “I couldn’t be bothered” or “I don’t know how to connect it or where to mount it”. The technical issues can be countered very easily if each data logger comes as a package with its cable and a simple “double adaptor” (see Figure 1) which even I can construct for a few Dollars. Any pilot can connect the double adaptor to the battery in the morning during DI and let the logger run all day, stowing it away near the battery. After flying they simply disconnect the whole setup and take it to the clubhouse where some kind soul will assist them with the downloading. That could be worth 50-100,000 registered km per season and might be considered marketing dollars well spent. Remember that next season we have to make up this season’s Nationals kms to maintain our position!

Figure 1

A regional perspective

One school of thought might say that our commercial friends in Corowa might be quite concerned about the emergence of Benalla, out of nowhere so to speak, on the OLC site as a major cross-country site and potential competitor. They would know that our percentage registration would be much lower than theirs and that in reality we are much closer to them than the OLC shows. I am quite confident, however, that they have sufficient commercial savvy to view things quite differently and to see our success as adding to theirs. What we are really seeing on the OLC is proof that this little corner of South-eastern Australia is one of the most prolific cross-country gliding regions in the world. Simply add the distances flown in Corowa and Benalla and then throw in Tocumwal, Wangaretta and Mount Beauty and you get the staggering number of 860,000km flown this season. Our only serious rival is the group of farms around Bitterwasser in the Kalahari desert in Namibia who managed to fly 810,000km over the same period. Admittedly, their season is cut short by the onset of the rainy period in January, but that’s life and part of selecting that location. So, we enhance each others business and each others success, Corowa and Benalla, because we both prove the point, that one can comfortably fly significant distances in this part of the world, without having to worry about whether the owners of the farm have sufficient loaves of bread left in the freezer to feed you because the nearest bakery is 80 km away.

The Australian cross-country landscape

What does the OLC tell us about the state of gliding and more particularly cross-country flying in Australia. Tables 4 and 5 show the cross-country activity of Australian gliding sites and clubs, showing that 20% of all cross-country flying is undertaken by GCV members and 40% of all Australian cross country flights are undertaken from Benalla, ignoring the “tourist” operation in Corowa in this analysis. Beyond that the tables show the extent of the concentration; 5 clubs account for 50% and 5 sites for 74% of all distances flown. The contributions of the remaining clubs and sites are relatively small.

Table 4

These statistics are quite sobering. While it would be easy to crow about being the largest we need to seriously think about the responsibility that comes with this position and the role we need to play to ensure that gliding survives and prospers in this country. The gliding community is ageing and over the next decade or less we all need to manage the generational change among our instructors and tuggies and our membership in general. This is difficult enough for a large club like GCV and more difficult for smaller clubs and it is quite likely that we will see some consolidation towards the larger clubs and sites – of which there are not many - where resources can be pooled and training provided more easily. GCV clearly has a role to play in this process and we, and GFA, need to think about how best to facilitate this in the interest of the sport as a whole.

Table 5

Recommended reading

All this from the OLC website you might say? Well, it’s all there, even if it takes some time to extract. To finish off though I would like to recommend browsing the OLC site to any glider pilot – it provides a wealth of information, both interesting and educational.

During our summer you can see who else is flying and what they are doing. It can help you improve your weather forecasting and interpretation skills. While you sit in Melbourne during the week, for example, you can look at various weather pages on the internet including the temp traces for Melbourne and Wagga for the day and form your view on the weather, e.g. when it will start, how high it will go and where you would fly in these conditions. In the evening you can see what was actually flown out of Benalla and by whom, when thermal activity started, how high it went and where individual pilots flew to. Over time this will increase your confidence. If you do this on Thursday and Friday then you will be much better prepared for your flying on the weekend. Remember, a successful cross-country flight starts long before you close the canopy, ready to launch. Especially at the beginning and the end of the soaring season it might also enable you to make an informed decision on Friday whether you want to drive to Benalla on Friday night for an early midday launch or whether you can leave early on Saturday for a 2.30 or 3.00 p.m. launch, based on what you can see on the OLC site for the past 3 days.

There is also other interesting stuff. For example, you might be looking at February 7 where 5 flights were made out of Benalla and you would see that Michael Sommer flew the furthest distance and managed to extract an average climb rate of 3.55 m/s out of that day while the other pilots ranged between 2.45 and 2.97m/s. You can then try to work out why - is it different task selection, different time of the day or is it simply because he is the world champion and he does something a little better than everyone else?

On cold winter nights you can follow the gliding activity in the Northern Hemisphere and see the amazing number of kilometers that are flown every day in Europe and North America under so many different conditions and often more difficult conditions than the ones we are accustomed to. By the time we come to the end of our winter millions of kilometers will have been flown by thousands of pilots and GCV and Benalla will no longer occupy the prominent positions in the above tables 1A and 1B and then we will come to realize that we are only a big fish in our small Australian pond and that makes it much easier for us to be humble once again, rather than those beautiful tables do right now.

I hope that some of what you have read in this article also opens up your eyes to the OLC as a new medium, a new form of communication which should bring the gliding world closer together, where you can share your experiences with others and can share in the experiences of others and that it encourages you to take the next step and log your own flights. Let me leave you with one example which gives some insight into what is possible in this new medium of communication. Go to the “Daily Score” for 5 April to the top flight in the table by Axel Breuer and click on the “info” button. You then have access to the usual OLC flight analysis as well as a 20-line pilot comment (where it would be helpful to understand German) and also to a link on which you can click and which will show you 15 pictures taken during that flight.