At 17:30 21 March 2005, wrote:
Hi Papa 3,
There is something else going on is US racing that
hasn't beed
mentioned. We're not calling the old Assigned task
very much, any more;
Parowan last year----5 TAT's and only 1 AST
Standard's ' ' ----2 MAT's and 2 TAT's
Seniors this year-----2 AST's and 4 TAT's

The vast majority will be coming from other than a
known last turn
point. They may be coming from all directions in the
case of the MAT
and from a wide quadrant in the case of the TAT, depending
on its
radius and distance from home plate. If for no other
reason, this makes
it a 'No Brainer' to use the finish cylinder.

Your last two posts are your best arguments to-date
JJ. Perversely it's less
about inherent safety of one finish versus the other
and more about simple
practicality of making it work with contemporary task
calling.

A gate doesn't make sense if you can't define a finish
course line to the
gate so we're not going to see many gate finishes if
people don't call
suitable tasks. The mixed class tasking at regionals
also makes it harder
to use anything but the common denominator finish.


So we are either left calling only ASTs and TATs with
decent final legs, or
having a set of steering turnpoints at the end of every
task for all classes.
Only the truly dedicated will adopt these additional
tasking constraints just
to have a finish gate.

So you see you don't really need to kill the gate because
it's already dead.
Of course beating a dead horse is a time-honored tradition
here. g

9B