Minden pilot wins year long World Championship soaring contest

Submitted by paula on Fri, 10/03/2014 - 7:46am

Minden's Jim Payne has soared to another world championship, winning his third consecutive Aerokurier Online Soaring Contest (OLC). This year long event has almost 15,000 pilots from around the world competing for top honors.

To compete, glider pilots record their flights with a GPS logger and submit their flight logs to the contest web site for scoring.

Payne not only won the top award, he won several categories as well as other awards:

- Distance: Payne's 6 best distance flights covered a total of 12,616.16 kilometers (7,839.7 miles) which made him world champion in the OLC Plus (distance) for the fourth time in the last seven years.

- Speed: He also won the world championship in the OLC Speed category. His average speed for his 6 best flights is 223 km per hour (139 miles per hour). This is his seventh world championship in eight years in the speed category.

- His longest flight of 2,701 km (1,678 miles) was the world’s longest of the year.

- Payne's fastest flight of 241 kph (150 mph) was also the world’s fastest in 2014.

- In Barron Hilton Challenge for the longest triangle flight of 2104, Jim is the world champion 20-meter class. He flew a 1,085 km (674 mile) triangle

- In the All Flights category, Jim is the vice world champion with 45,618 km (28,347 miles) in 51 flights. This is greater than the distance around the world.

The Minden-Tahoe area is one of the best in the world for soaring pilots. Pilots flying from the airport logged 214,160 km (133,079 miles), more than any other airport in the United States during the 2014 season.

Anyone interested in soaring should visit SoaringNV at the Minden-Tahoe Airport. The Minden-Tahoe Airport is recognized as one of the best locations in the world for soaring and is home base to approximately 350 aircraft including 80 gliders. Annual aircraft movements are estimated at 90,000 with about 40 percent of these as glider/tow plane operations and motor-gliders. The Airport has an annual economic impact of over $52 million and is one of the leading airports in the Lake Tahoe region, The airport is currently working toward building a Sports Aviation Complex.

Full results are available online.