Let’s not wait for the Mingus Fly-in to run some XC tasks. The XC season is clearly open and popping, so let’s start flying some tasks now.

Andy and I have selected several weekends during which we plan to run tasks if the weather gods allow us. We’ve selected the weekends in advance so that pilots can plan accordingly, but we’ll wait until Thursday or Friday before each weekend to settle on the specific day and the site. If the weather works and the pilots are available, we’ll happily run tasks on both days, but let’s start by trying to get one task flown on each of the selected weekends.

Sites will include all the usual suspects carrying names beginning with “M”, but we’ll also leverage our community’s towing capacity and hit a few of the less obvious sites.

There are no entry fees, prizes, divisions, or champagne showers with scantily clad members of the opposite sex. Just fun task flying and scoring.

We’re hoping to get both PGs and HGs out there, and we’re happy to have pilots spanning the spectrum from new XC pilots to the grizzled battle-hardened veterans of the comp scene, and we’ll do our best to set tasks that will amuse and challenge everyone. You may recall that Andy crafted a task with three different goals for the Mingus fly-in. (We’re also hoping to see some tandem task flying, so start working out who will be PIC and who will be Flight Engineer.)

Retrieve drivers are probably the single most challenging bit of all this, and it may turn out that the solution is to pay them. So, while we won’t be charging entry fees, we may be asking you to help fund your retrieve.

Andy has built a web site to house the waypoints, scores, and calendar: https://sites.google.com/site/sazxcleague/

If you think you might join us, even for just one task, please go to the web site and do the following soon (as in before 10:00 a.m. on the day you plan to fly your first task):
• Register (so we can assign a pilot ID for scoring)
• Download all the waypoints onto your PC
• Look at the calendar and consider allocating a few weekends to fly a task
• Learn to push waypoints from your PC into your GPS
• Learn to enter tasks using these waypoints into your GPS
• Learn to pull a track log off your GPS

The web site has some instructions that should help with the latter three steps. If you need help, please contact one of us. We’re not experts at this, but we have some experience with most of the common devices out there.

Last year everyone who participated enjoyed flying the task at Mingus, so please pick a weekend or seven and join us.

Andy Miller, arellima@gmail.com
John Wolfe, j_r_wolfe@msn.com