Technology that may make me competitive...

[Steve Helmick]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/20/this-glove-makes-you-beethoven/

The way I understand it, I've still got to do it perfect once...which is a problem in itself.    Steve

[Tim Wescott]

Steve, figure out how many hours you'd have to work to pay for that glove (if you were still working).

Then put that many hours in at the flying field, practicing.

And I don't mean flying -- I mean practice.  Go out there, get aggressive about identifying what you're doing wrong, figure out what to work on to not do those wrong things any more, and do that.  Over and over, until you get it right.

I recall once mentioning to you that I had taken a month off from doing the pattern to practice individual maneuvers, and you astonished me by criticizing that practice as a way to forget the pattern.  It did help me to mess up the pattern, but it also bumped my scores by 20 points a flight or so when I remembered all the tricks.

That may be a place to start -- it's a lot easier to nail three loops in a row if you've just done three loops in a row, and you learn what it feels and looks like to do it.  When you start doing all 14 maneuvers again (dammit, which one did I miss that time?) you'll find that they're better.

I'm really fortunate in having a flying buddy who's as focused as I am on improvement, and who understands how to deliver (and receive) a thorough and unsparing critique.  Usually he's pointing out things that I've already seen, but sometimes not, and when we see ourselves doing the same mistake over and over, he helps me to figure out what to change to get better.  If you can stand being sociable enough not to drive anyone away, see if there's anyone else up there in the Great Soggy North who's willing to pick your flying apart in return for having their flying picked apart.

[Steve Helmick]

Oh, don't worry about that, Tim. Everybody up here is pretty judgemental. The problem is getting them out of their chairs in the pits and to the upwind position. Lots of gimps, including me.

The main point of posting the link was to warn our community that technology is coming that we may have to ban before it gets out of the barn. To allow this sort of thing would be totally wrong.    Steve

[Tim Wescott]

We'll still have to worry about the wind.

[Steve Helmick]

We'll still have to worry about the wind.

Yup! Saw a good example of that just yesterday. Alan Resinger was doing his Sq.8 where he should have, but a small dust devil came from the south (crosswind) and made it pretty exciting. Grass shards swirling around marked a nice trail across the ramp, right through his Sq8. It was not fun for Alan!  Steve