A big day today, with some of the longest tasks ever set at a World Gliding Competition. 18-Meter class had 756 km, Open 757, and 20-Meter (last to launch) 645. Speeds were typically excellent – as they would need to be for pilots to fly that far on solar energy. All but 3 pilots completed their task, yielding (by my quick calculation) a total scored distance of 59,841 km. That’s very close to one and a half times around the Earth, and slightly more than 15% of the distance to the moon.
Will such a day ever again be seen? Well, Hungary is enjoying a remarkable stretch of weather, and the forecast this evening says we might see another tomorrow. (In reality, I think not – even if the weather would support it: All pilots had 6+ hours in the cockpit today, some substantially more. Asking them to do the same tomorrow would be inviting problems.)
Karl and Sarah were among those who got around their task, but it didn’t start – or score – especially well. Their idea was to start reasonably early, with a promising group of 20-Meter gliders. But they hit the start line about 5 seconds after their recent Pilot Event start “window” had closed. [I explained the PEV rule in my report for July 26.] Even one second incurs a 50-point penalty, so it seemed obvious the best plan was to retreat, climb, and go with another group of good pilots who were delaying their starts. Unfortunately, this didn’t pay off: the earlier group consistently found slightly better lift, and was able to avoid weakening conditions on the final leg home from the northeast. As the scoresheet shows, all but one early starter scored well, while none of the later ones did. (Sarah is not a big fan of PEV.)
A follow-up to yesterday’s airspace penalties: A factor that almost certainly contributed to the problem is low-level military airspace that lies along the southern border. This extends only to 1500 ft MSL – it’s perfectly acceptable to fly above it, excellent lift has made it easy to stay high enough, and tasks have frequently caused pilots to fly there. But this complicates things when – as most pilot do – you’re using a graphical display to avoid problem airspace. Instead of “keep clear of all displayed airspace” your instructions to yourself are “it’s okay to be in one reddish area on the map, just don’t cross into the other”. Especially in a single-place glider, a pilot’s workload can make it challenging to devote the necessary mental bandwidth to this task. If the sky tempts you with a line of beautiful cumulus clouds, and especially if you see a couple of other pilots chasing them, it can be easy to fall victim. Some sort of smart alarm is needed, making it close to impossible to enter forbidden airspace without being made aware.

I spent some time with a map today, checking out names of Hungarian cities and towns. These generally don’t look quite as strange to the uninitiated as is the case in, say, Poland (e.g. Szczebrzeszyn) or Australia (e.g. Wangkatjungka). But there are some interesting ones: Just 25 km northeast of Szeged is Hódmezővásárhely, and perhaps Medgyesegyháza deserves mention. To be fair, these are atypical, and indeed Hungary serves up a lot of very easy ones. Here’s a list I compiled of admirably short place names (interestingly, almost all from the western part of the country).
Pecs, Kam, Mor, Acs, Tet, Buk, Vac, Deg, Zics, Vep, Jak, Per, Val, Nick.
(I’ll note that, properly speaking, many of these are misspelled, as I have omitted the diacritical marks. The Hungarian language has plenty of these – which any language that has 44 letters in its alphabet would certainly need.)

You can find the latest contest scores at:
https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/37th-fai-world-gliding-championships-2022-szeged-2022/results