An interesting year for the SoCal XC League, once again generously organized by Aaron Price. Aaron puts a huge amount of time into the organization, including writing custom code to automate many of the administrative tasks. This years innovations saw automated generation of Dooarma replays for all pilots that submitted tracklogs, which is just amazing for post race analysis and entertainment.
2016 Final Results
The start of the season saw a lot of amazing midweek flights in the area by many pilots - but average weather for our XC League events. I work a full time job and had parents visiting from New Zealand for two months in spring, so couldn't take advantage of the great weather and some of the epic convergence lines that setup mid week.
Five out of a total of 16 SoCal XC League events got cancelled this year, with a combination of weather, fire and an accident. Not surprisingly, event organizer Aaron Price was a bit discouraged by the cancellations, especially when epic flying had been had by league pilots on weekends and weekdays when we didn't have events. Just bad luck. Maybe we are simply spoiled in southern California with too many flyable days. There are not many local leagues around the world that have events set over an eight month flying season, and are disappointed when a quarter of events aren't flyable. I know in my native country New Zealand, they consider themselves lucky even to get a flyable national champs every year! Last year the kiwis traveled to Australia to host their nationals, a bit like the Brits travel to somewhere in Europe.
I struggled to stay motivated for the whole season with a combination of parents visiting and a family trip to Germany. These took me away from regular flying for weeks in the middle of the spring and summer. By the end of the season I didn't even go to as the Owens for the final event as the Owens increasingly seems to me like a lot of driving for hit and miss flying. Several races I really should have flown better, but didn't slow down in order to climb high at the right time, instead racing myself into the ground in the hopes of finding the next thermal. Others I just didn't feel quite as motivated as in 2014 and 2015 when I first started flying the SoCal XC League and was second both years in Sport Class. I ended up tenth overall, down from fifth last year. Last year I was helped by winning the first race of the season, which definitely helps get a head-start in the points and amps up your motivation.
The standard in the SoCal league increased so much in the last years that there are pilots that can now both race hard and fly effectively. Local legend and national sport class champion Len Szafaryn in first place showed how much years of flying experience at Marshall counts, winning three of the seven events he flew. Russ Detweiler aka "The Professor" was close behind showing how he has now successfully evolved his consistent, persistent style into a hard charging racing one. Russ won just one race, but scored over 900 points in four more, showing how consistent he was. Russ did have an eventful flying year, throwing his reserve at Chelan in strong wind, and breaking his arm in the Owens valley after getting caught by a gust on launch.
Bill Hardesty in third showed that when he turns up he is just as good as paragliding as he is at professional yacht racing - calculated, determined, tactical and fast!
We are probably lucky Chris Cote didn't attend more league events. It took him just three events to get seventh place. Thanks to his flexible Navy job, he was busy using every flyable day of this season to break San Diego site records and pioneer agressive new XC routes all over San Diego county. Sadly Chris will be posted overseas from mid next year for a couple of years with the Navy, so we'll miss his boundless energy unlimited enthusiasm and organizing of many spontaneous XC days in the San Diego area.
Rookie of the season was definitely Mike Lester, in eighth place on a B-Class wing in his first year in the league. His first event was task five. An amazing performance with improvements every single event. Showed how much he learned flying in the Rat Race Sprint and by hanging out with me I guess... I think he is the only person who said he read all of my previous year's Rat Race blog posts!
Many of the tasks this year were set harder than the last two years. In particular the previously considered quite difficult task of Marshall to the Hanger 24 brewery is now considered a achievable "milk run" on most decent days. A group of female pilots all made the trip to Hanger 24 this season by flying together and taking their time. It's such a cool goal, with hard fought climbs and some tricky transitions required to get down the range, but once you are high over Mt Harrison, the reward a glide out over an active airport, then an easy landing right by the hippest brewery in the area!
I love the XC League for the camaraderie of launching as a group with a defined objective in mind. For me it's much more interesting that just trying to do big distance or flying into uncharted terrain with no idea how you will get retrieve. The SoCal XC League has hugely increased my flying pleasure after moving here to San Diego in 2013.
Lets hope 2017 is another great year!
