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pete golden

1000 km Glider Flight - 16 Decisions: What Would YOU Decide?


category: crosscountry
Duration: 01:12:04
Description:
On Aug 24 2021 I launch from Boulder, Colorado on a cross-country glider flight with the goal to reach Nebraska, to complete a pre-declared 600 km FAI triangle, and to expand the flight to a 750 FAI triangle, if possible. My longest prior flight was just over 900 km and I don't think that this is the day for breaking the 1000 km mark. But that will change.

Cross-country soaring is a "decision sport": the outcome of every flight - successful or not - is ultimately the result of a myriad of decisions - big and small. Learning to make these decisions well is a complex process. The quality of our choices tends to improve over time as we learn from our past decisions - usually based on those that remain stuck in our brain because we got them badly wrong...

I believe that every flight offers many more opportunities to learn. And not just from our mistakes. But to do that we have to go back and try to isolate the decisions that we made. What went through our heads as we made these decisions? Sometimes we fail to consider even the most obvious factors, because our mind is pre-occupied by a detail that is at best tangentially relevant.

This video is an attempt to make my decision making as transparent as possible. I have isolated 16 decisions that contributed to the successful outcome of this flight. I invite you to review these decisions with me and to reflect on what you would have done. I'm not suggesting that all my decisions were all correct. Sometimes different choices may have been better. Often we don't know what would have happened.

However, I believe the key to good decision making is to be deliberate about it. To recognize that we have a choice among multiple options, to seek to understand the relevant parameters and to forecast their implications. I hope that doing just that is what this video will help you do.

Once you are mindful about what it is that you're deciding, and are able to quickly identify and consider the relevant parameters, your decision making will improve. Your flights will become more successful and hopefully they will also become safer. That's true whether your goal is to complete your first 50km flight, or if you're trying to break a record.

Again, I am not suggesting that you should copy my decisions. I make plenty of mistakes. But you should train yourself to decide. If this video helps you with that, then the many hours of work to create it will have been worthwhile. Now watch and enjoy! And make your own decisions...

My glider is a Ventus 2cxT 18m high-performance sailplane from Schempp-Hirth. The flight originated and ended at Boulder Municipal Airport (KBDU) - an ideal soaring location for exploring the sky in Colorado and beyond.

Watch my other videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessInTheAir/videos
Check out my Website: https://chessintheair.com/
Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChessInTheAir

All music is from Epidemic Sound.

The full flight trace can be found here: https://www.weglide.org/flight/99368
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