Distance only, no speed points or time limits for that distance?

Interesting concept for the XC purist.

Frank Whiteley

"Bob Korves" bkorves@winfirstDECIMALcom wrote in message
...
All of this argument could be solved by going to a task described to me by
Ray Gimmey:

RETURN DISTANCE

Go anywhere you want and then turn toward home. Only mileage toward home
from the farthest point counts.

End of rules.
;-)
-Bob Korves

"Andy Blackburn" wrote in message
...
At 18:00 19 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:


Oh, that's good! Let's use all of the finish line,
even though we know the pilots go for the nearest corner..........

.............And let's just use 1/12th of the finish
cylinder..................That aught make the numbers
look good.

This part of the discussion has gotten a little silly.
On an AST or TAT there
is no way that the traffic is going to be finishing
from 360-degrees. Maybe
on a MAT, though I've not heard anyone suggest using
a gate for a MAT
with no final turnpoint. It's true that if the gate
is close to parallel to the
final courseline people will try to 'hook' it, but
I've not seen a CD set up a
task that way in some time. Yeah, I guess even if the
gate is 45-degrees to
the final course line pilots will converge on the close
end. You could make
a similar argument about the cylinder - there's always
a single point that is
closest to the final turnpoint. I've just never had
a problem with inadequate
space to finish under either scenario.

I don't know of any pilot who would deliberately fly
into someone to beat
them to the line, so the question has to be does one
form of finishing
inherently lead to finishers being unable to see and
avoid on another? I've
heard lots of arguments but thankfully no evidence
of actual collisions - a
couple of 'encounters' have been mentioned for both
gates and cylinders.
So, on this one we're definitely talking about problems
in the theoretical. I
personally have found more people finishing at different
speeds and
altitudes and directions under cylinders than gates
and in my mind this
creates mor opportunity for a glider to come at you
from an unexpected
direction. I've gotten surprised once myself in this
way in a cylinder, never
in a gate, but that's just me.

The second part of the argument has been about energy
management, this
is an entirely separate argument from finish line configuration.
It is true
that it's possible for someone to make a legal gate
finish with too little
energy and have a problem trying to make a pattern
afterwards. JJ has his
list of 5 accidents. We also have some examples of
pullups and spins trying
to make 500' at the edge of the cylinder. Some see
it clearly one way - I
look at it and see a more mixed picture. That's why
I say we leave it up to
the CD and contest organizers to decide what's most
suitable for the site,
the day and the contestants.

Over the 30 years I've been flying contests I have
found the sport
becoming progressvely more antiseptic, with less and
less of a visceral
sense of racing from starts and finishes to navigation,
tasks and scoring.
The start I don't miss much and I have found the new
tasks to offer new
challenges that in some ways cvompensate for the fact
that you spend
most of the flight flying by yourself. Waiting sometimes
overnight to find
out who won has been a downer. Overall most of us
have been willing to
make these tradeoffs. Maybe the finish gate is the
last tangible feature of
the sport that actually feels like racing - and just
maybe that's why some of
us want to hang on to it.

Otherwise we may as well all do OLC - or get copies
of Sailors of the Sky.

9B