August Race Announcement - Whistler 150

Some of the legs contain special bonus challenges.

Here are the details:

Leg 1: Buzzing the treetops

Sometimes we all like to have fun and go real low, right ? So now here's your opportunity :

• If you wish (optional !) fly the whole leg as low above ground level (AGL^*1) as possible, buzzing treetops, cars and houses^*2.
  

The pilot with the lowest "Avg. altitude AGL" (as per Duenna .txt file) gets a bonus of 5% (absolute) deducted from his performance ratio^*3.

*1 Just to make it clear - altitude above ground level (or AGL altitude) is the altitude measured with respect to the underlying ground surface. This is as opposed to altitude/elevation above mean sea level (AMSL), so you can fly at altitude 3000 ft AMSL, but be only 10 ft AGL above ground (watch out for that tree coming up ahead).

*2 Don't worry about complaints by residents - we have arranged a big party at Squamish for the residents along the flight path, and if anybody nevertheless complains we have good connections to the Civil Aviation Branch of Transport Canada...

*3 Note that only the pilot with the lowest "Avg. altitude AGL" gets a bonus, next-lowest pilot gets no bonus.

Leg 3: STOL landing

Sometimes we all like to show off, right ? (and this skill can save your butt on the next leg). So now here's your opportunity :

• Perform a perfect short landing.
  

The pilot with the shortest time between touchdown and stopping (as per Duenna .txt file^*4) gets 5% (absolute) deducted from his performance ratio.

*4 Some details of calculation of stopping time:
Data from the Duenna .txt log is used.
The stopping time is the time between Duenna first detects the plane being "OnGround" and the time the planes' ground speed "GS" is below 5 kts (or Duenna stops).

Example from fs-duenna.com/flights/logs/9UD9vgnWtHcMvn2GPxXswifMgrM.txt :

-> Stopping time: 23:37:40 - 23:37:15 = 00:00:25

For what it is worth that airstrip looks like it is there in real life although I would think based on the current satellite imagery it might be hard to land on the runway.

A quick heads-up.

It seems there's something wrong with the weather file that's posted, as it may contain incomplete wind data.
Teson and I are currently troubleshooting the issue, and we might end up using a different weather file.
Please bear with us, and don't start any races with the current files yet!

Update #1: Hopefully the issue has been fixed now, but we will have to use a new weather file.
The date & time of the new file is 02.08.2013 @ 16:21, and can be downloaded from the GetWeather page.
This is NOT definitive yet though, so don't submit any races with it! But it looks promising, so if you want to run some tests with it already, go ahead.
I will be posting an update here, when everything is final.
The initial weather should looks something like this at the starting airport (don't worry, it gets better on further legs):


Update #2: Looks like the new weather file works correctly, so let the race begin!