Last weekend my soaring club, the Louisville Area Soaring Society, held a contest – the 2007 Mid-American Soaring Championship. Normally it’s held in Lexington (as has been so for the past 30-plus years), but they’ve had some issues with their flying field and we stepped in to give them a hand this year.

The Mid-Am (as it is known) is also part of a “series” of soaring events located around the Ohio Valley – called the Ohio Valley Soaring Series, in which model sailplane pilots from all over the midwest travel to different cities and compete to become the OVSS champ, and win a new radio or plane donated by a sponsor.

The Mid-Am was the only contest out of the 8 or 9 held that wasn’t “man-on-man” style. This is widely considered to be the gold standard of flying competition, in that each pilot is flying in the same conditions as the other pilots he/she is scored against. The “old” way, known as “open winch”, allowed pilots to wait for good conditions to launch. Man-on-man forces everyone to fly in the same air – good or bad. Soaring is a very competitive hobby and while it might seem like a simple thing, this has a big impact on drawing people to a contest.

I flew Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I did pretty well each day (by my standards) and placed 3rd on Friday and Saturday, but ran into some bad luck on Sunday. All in all a good weekend. As happy as I was about my performance, it makes me happy just putting on an event like that.

Read more here: 2007 Mid-Am Champs in the books! @ LouisvilleSoaring.org