British Gliding Association : Waypoint Database

[Simon Dobby 18]

Hi

New to this virtual soaring lark (did loads of real-life gliding at Lasham late 1980s / early 1990s), I've decided to base my virtual-self at Sutton Bank in Yorkshire, as it offers local ridge, thermal and wave possibilities. (FSX Scenery available at Avsim, search for "Sutton Bank").

I checked out the Yorkshire Gliding Club website (www.ygc.co.uk), which is based there, and found that the 2009 Northern Regionals were held there over 6 days in early August. What is very handy is they have a number of web pages showing the courses, results and weather forecasts for each day of the comp (http://www.ygc.co.uk/northerns/index.php with a link to http://www.soaringspot.com/northerns_09/).

So, as an exercise I think I might have a go at creating some FSX flight-plans (not bold enough to create missions!) for each of the 6 tasks, setup my weather to be vaguely similar to that forecast on the day (particularly cloudbase, blue-thermal or not, and wind), and see how completely rubbish I am compared to the real-life competitors.

Anyway, as an aside, and as part of this venture, I needed to know the co-ordinates of each of the turning points (and the various start/finish points at Sutton Bank). As luck would have it, the British Gliding Association has an official waypoint list showing all waypoints in England and Scotland. There is an explanatory page at http://www.spsys.demon.co.uk/waypoints/tp-frame2.htm, and on that page is a link to an Excel (97-2003) file of the waypoints (http://www.spsys.demon.co.uk/waypoints/2009.xls).

I just thought that - for aspiring UK flight-planners out there who haven't yet found it - this link might be of benefit.

Regards

Simon

[koala 0]

Thanks for the heads-up, nice glider airport, winch works fine sending you off the cliff.

Looking forward to try your flights

[Simon Dobby 18]

I've created the six flightplans and test-flown the Day 2 task (the shortest of the tasks at 151km). I flew it using an easy setting ("Fair weather" and the default CumulusX! config), used the Soar DG808S and finished it in 1h30m. I think the max start-height was about 4000 ft for the real event, but I dived through at about 3200'.

I have since added a few waypoints to the flightplan prior to the start-line to give the "Aerotow" tug a more interesting flightpath (and to prevent FSX thinking you have crossed the startline while still on tow).

I used the "Aerotow" add-on, and have a Piper Pawnee (http://www.simviatio...PiperPawnee.zip with repaint at http://aussiex.org/f...?showtopic=2576) to do the towing (Yorkshire Gliding club have two of these planes I think, plus a Super Cub) - it seems to tow at a far gentler airspeed than the Maule does. [NB This Pawnee is an FS2004 plane but the repaint is for FSX; all works fine]

The official competition tow-height is 2900'AMSL (approx 2000'AAL), and coming out of runway 20 with the new waypoints I have defined, the Pawnee/DG808 combination arrives at that height just prior to overflying the airfield, after a few right hand turns.

My next attempt will be with a lower cloudbase (4000ft) and a south-westerly 15knot wind, more accurately reflecting the real-life event. I haven't yet tried CumulusX! with any real wind, so I suspect I might be making some unscheduled landings at some of the various small airfields scattered around the Vale of York over the next week or so.

[Simon Dobby 18]

Thanks for the heads-up, nice glider airport, winch works fine sending you off the cliff.

I tried a 900m winch running at 90km/h on runway 20 with wind 230/16kts, and got 1200' AAL in a K8. IIRC, 900m winch puts the winch just the other side of the rw20 / rw24 intersection.