LFSD West Coast Challenge
Long Flights on Short Days
Updated 1/3/05

Objective Updates [current 2021] [3/2006] [1/2005] [12/2019] [12/2021]

Objectives

The objectives of the LFSD West Coast Challenge are:

1. Encourage our local pilots to share their flight stories
2. Highlight flights from our winter home range
3. Give credit to flights on shorter days

There has been some confusion about the purpose of the Challenge.  The initial reaction was that it's another contest to select the best pilots or flights.  We do offer incentive for pilots to participate, but the primary goal is to encourage our local pilots to share their war stories and gain the added benefit of being able to build an archive.

Another main objective is to highlight the advantage our local costal range sites have in winter months by challenging the rest of the country to post better scores around the winter solstice.

We are also attempting to level the playing field by giving more weight to flights on shorter days, but the graph is skewed more to give a strong advantage to the part of the SB season that typically has an advantage over the rest of the country.  If we're trying to be purist about balancing the length of the days, we would use a curve that would give more weight to desert flights near the equinox.

The challenge is currently sponsored by Tom Truax (The Sundowner, paraglide.net, & Tasker).  The prize money is modest, but if anyone wants to make the pot bigger, we'll take all bets.