Canada, Club Instances
Edmonton Soaring Club Proving Grounds
The Edmonton Soaring Club (ESC) operates off of a grass strip near the town of Chipman, Alberta, northeast of the city of Edmonton.
ESC is an innovative club with a number of tremendous programs to develop pilots, especially youth – the host of the oversubscribed ‘Western Canada Youth Development Camp’. Leaders at ESC liked the idea of a program to support XC pilot development, especially one that can stand the test of time, and requires little to no management by members with too much management obligation as it is.
ESC uses 3 triangle tasks that build on each other to define their Proving Grounds using the club as a start/finish point and 3 distinct turnpoints per task.
ESC Proving Grounds Task Sheet (March 2020)
1 Comment
Jason Acker
Proving Grounds has been a very exciting addition to our cross country training program at the Edmonton Soaring Club. While we have promoted the FAI bronze badge program as an entry point into enabling club members to have the skills to venture away from the field, Proving Grounds was what we needed to motivate members to head out on a cross country task. Since implementing the program three weeks ago, we have already recorded 5 successful completions of our triangles and have had many members make attempts. Successfully completing a triangle has been very satisfying for members as we compete for who has the fastest time. But more importantly, those that have not been successful have used the opportunity to work with our instructors and senior members to understand what they did wrong to invalid their flight (missed a turn point, missed a start / finish cylinder height) or what they need to work on to avoid getting low and having to turn back to the field…. or land out.
In only 3 weeks, I have seen members who where very happy to spend hours in the local club thermals, decide to venture out and attempt one of the triangles…. only to have their first successful landout. Giving our members a common cross country goal, appears to have been the missing piece that our cross country program needed at ESC!
Proving Grounds has injected a significant amount of excitement into the club and we are very happy to see the response our members have had to this very easy to manage program. Fantastic support from Casey, Chris and Patrick has made implementing this program very simple for our members! Thanks guys!
Jason Acker, CFI Edmonton Soaring Club