There was purpose to turning left at contests!

[Cliff Hilty]

Too funny we had it right (or left) afterall! We Are Not Ambiturners

Humans consistently show a preference toward moving counterclockwise, a study published yesterday reveals. The phenomenon is not yet understood but holds true across variations in environment, age, gender, culture, and handedness. The inclination was first observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when researchers in Spain considered how to maintain social distancing in crowds. In 32 out of 33 experiments, pedestrians ended up veering left and moving counterclockwise. Since most animals walk without directional preference (exceptions include temnothorax ants), researchers were puzzled. They conducted further experiments in Spain and Japan, corroborating the findings, including with teenagers, toddlers, and adults in various settings and crowd sizes. That preference was especially pronounced in a nursery school, suggesting the phenomenon may have biological roots. Researchers hope to conduct further studies in virtual reality spaces. The findings could help inform how airports, malls, and other public spaces are designed. (How do crowd engineers do it? See considerations, via YouTube.)

Cliff

[Charles Mampe]

To clarify, we used to use mounted turnpoint cameras to document flights (pre GPS). These cameras were mounted on the left side canopy rail. Thus we all needed to turn left at turnpoints to get a photo and we did a left turn at the start IP when heading to the start gate.

[Mark Mocho]

Believe it or not, the preponderance of left turns actually dates back to early tool and weapon use. Rotating your body to the left greatly increases the power of a blow from the right hand. Look at the relative power of a forehand or backhand swing in tennis.

[Charles Mampe]

Having been married to a "leftie" and having a "leftie" in immediate family, I hear them shout!

Yes, go back far enough in real history, right hand was "Dexter", left land was "Sinister".

When I was in school, it was the tail end of breaking "lefties" to go to "righties". When I skateboarded, I was a "goofy footer", Later in life, I was prone to ambidextrous although rightie was main.

Yes, left turns in glider contests was based on cameras sighting along the front edge of the left wing. In the start and "any active turnpoint" meant turns to the left for ANYTHING.

Just saying.

History question.......why is there a max of 11 turnpoints on a MAT????

[Chip Bearden]

That's easy (at least for someone of my age). :) 

11=the number of frames in an Instamatic film catridge minus one shot for the start board photo to "seal" the camera. But I honestly don't recall whether the MAT was introduced before GPS. More likely this dates back to the days of the Cat's Cradle and POST tasks, both of which allowed pilots to pick their turnpoints at will, the former to maximize distance and the latter for speed and distance points. 

Of course, that presumed everyone was highly efficient and got their photos right (er, correct) the first time and didn't have to do a 360 and snap a second time.

Speaking of legacy problems, it took me a while before I was comfortable circling close to the home airport during a contest because of the prohibition in the start gate era of circling in the gate when pilots would dive through it at redline speed followed by a dramatic pullup. 

Chip Bearden

JB 

[Charles Mampe]

Chip/"JB"  gets a cookie (next VS cook out ia upcoming...).

Yes, max turnpoints were based on daily start board photo for the day and frames left in the roll of film.

So, yes, I can be a "circling direction Nazi" in the start gate, sometimes even in active turnpoints.

And yes, I read the same report online a couple days ago.;-)

[Mark Mocho]

I never worked a sailplane contest, but I was the scorekeeper and photo judge at many hang gliding contests in the 1990s. By far, the hardest contest I ever worked was around 1992 or 1993 at Dinosaur, Co. It was the US Nationals, and there were 144 pilots entered! Everybody was carrying two cameras, and the CD sometimes called tasks with as many as seven turnpoints. Figure each roll had a photo of the contest ID on the wing, the official clock at launch, the huge manually operated Start Clock on the ground, each turnpoint, a landing photo and then the rest of the film roll was used up on "creative" photos that I evaluated for the "photo of the day" prize. Oh, and the only film processor (a One-Hour Photo outlet) was 35 miles away in Vernal, UT. The developing machine took five minutes to process two rolls of film at a time. Then I had to look at every single frame, document the ID photo, clock photo, turnpoint photos and landing photos. And then judge the sometimes-obscene end-of-roll shots. (Hang Glider Pilots, don't ya' know). It was taking 10 hours a day just to go through the hundreds of film stips. The film came out as color negatives, but I had a cool photo-reverser that changed the image to a positive color frame that was shown on a television. I could zoom in, change the color balance and so on, but for tediousness, it was hard to beat. And then it was back to Contest headquarters at Dinosaur, fix yesterday's scores and start entering data from today, as pilots started rolling in after the task to turn in landing forms and film. This went on for a week. I was pulling 20 hour days, ending at 0200 to 0300 every day, bagging out for about 5 hours and doing it all again the next day. You might say I was very relieved when GPS based scoring came out a couple of years later, although things were still manually entered and scored. Definitely earned the "big bucks!"

[Eric Greenwell]

I learned to glide in 1975, when we made a right turn after releasing from tow; typically, the release was in a thermal, so I and everybody else just kept circling to the right to stay in the thermal. Circling right was also easier when flying right-handed, as did almost everyone. I also thought it would be easier to take a picture using my left hand on cameras mounted on the right rail.

 

Even though my last thirty years was self-launching, I still prefer to circle right, and I'm grumpy when I'm required to circle left (within a 5nm radius) at airports with contests.

Eric

[Charles Mampe]

I believe 99.9% of aero tow in the US are "glider break high right on release, tow plane goes descending left". The 0.10 is at our site (maybe others), for some tow pilots and some glider pilots, if a thermal is encountered during a left turn and the glider releases, the towplane breaks descending right so the glider can stay (hopefully) in the thermal.

As to circling left in start gates (it's in the US contest rules) there can be a conflict. I just had it at Mifflin contest as well as there and New Castle in the past. They do "ridge tows" on some days. They get you to ridge height and you get off once ridge is confirmed to work.

So, you get off tow (breaking right} and find a thermal. You work the thermal turning right (CW), BUT, that airspace is within a start circle. What to do??

What I do is get a few hundred feet over the ridge, then swap turning direction.

Another example, running a ridge where the ridge is to your left and you hit a thermal you want to work. Convention is turn away from the ridge, thus a right (CW) circle.

Again, once I have a few hundred feet ridge clearance, I swap direction if I'm in a start circle.

Yes, recently at Mifflin, I left right turning circles (CW) within the start cylinder since many already there. Easier to leave and get my own thermal than "herd cats" to swap.

[Kirk Stant]

We turn left waiting to start because it confuses those pilots who like to turn the wrong (right) way!

The "we turn right off tow so I have to thermal right" excuse is just that, a whining excuse. Off tow, you only have to turn 1 degree right - then rack it over to the left like a real man!

Turning left in thermals if you get there first is a great way to gain on all the late arriving directionally handicapped goobers in their shiny new FES toys...

Kirk

66

Push it up, take it down, turn left...

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[Stéphane Vander Veken]

Concerning the " We Are Not Ambiturners " article...  During my military service, we had "orientation marches" (you take a reading on your compass, you go XX km in that direction, then you take another direction for yy km, and so on... We were drilled into taking aiming points as far away as possible, and use them not to drift to the left (mostly). The reasoning was that most people being "righties", they also had a right leg that was slightly more powerful than the left one, and they tended to drift to the left as a consequence. And the exact opposite for the "lefties", of course... However, I never checked if this was a scientific fact.

[Tango Eight]

Key word: "was".  Still, we persist.  

It would make more sense, today, to have a right turns only rule, since this is the convention for release from tow.  Or we could just do away with the rule entirely as the Europeans have.

T8

[Charles Mampe]

I could support that change. It would help on ridge tows where you get off turning right (normally) and start a thermal circle to the right. At some point, you may need to reverse the circle direction after gaining some altitude (I'm thinking Mifflin and New Castle as examples). Whatever we chose, we should all do it. I do not like seeing/hearing "left turns in the start gate" as is fairly common today.

[Chip Bearden]

No problem with changing to right turns in start cylinder.  Also OK to call right turns on a ridge day at New Castle or Mifflin when it's appropriate. We changed the tow altitude at Mifflin the last day this year to accommodate a backside mission so why not?  

But I'll push back on pilot's choice. Just because the Europeans do it isn't a good reason to me. That's how we ended up with no requirement for underwing contest numbers (i.e., per the FAI rules). A small but non-zero impact on safety for no good reason.

So just pick a direction; we don't need more confusion prestart.  Tough enough out on course when someone decides they know better than the other gliders which is the correct direction. Happened last year. Was headed for a gaggle where one glider had gone by it and stopped beyond, circling in the opposite direction. Close but no conflict. I thought the far glider was going up faster so I also passed up the gaggle and joined him. Then the gaggle saw the same thing and shifted their circle over...retaining their same (i.e., conflicting) direction. One of them got on the radio and called us out rather self-righteously. I commented that I was following the other glider, to which the response was "We were here first." Not true, but by that time the original pilot had switched directions so I did, too. A dozen of them vs. two of us weren't good odds. :)

I always assume the "right turns in the start cylinder" calls are sparked by someone who thinks they're all by themself, or to whom the rules don't apply, or doesn't like to turn left, or whatever. 

Chip Bearden
JB

[Kirk Stant]

What we have now is good - no change needed. For starters, there is absolutely no need to circle right off tow - in fact that is a bad habit because you are intentionally losing sight of the towplane when it is still close to you. The "gliders turn right after release" just means that you clear to the right - a small check turn to make sure the rope is clear and confirm the towplane knows you have released is all that is needed - then it makes sense to me to turn left and keep the towplane in sight until you are SURE you have deconfliction (altitude/distance/heading). 

Then you are free to maneuver as needed, and to turn left at a contest, or right if you are so inclined.

Kirk

66

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