wrote:
Chip I think you meant to ask "Is Contest flying dead " .

Not if some effort is put into promoting contests and making them
interesting, inexpensive and especially for the younger folks new to
contest flying, easy to participate in .


My 2 cents worth .

Ron (ZA).

I agree. I've been running the Governor's Cup in Region II for (gasp)
10 years as of this season. In each of the last 5 years we've had
anywhere from 25 to 45 participants, about the same as a well-attended
regional. It's a middle ground between a regional (everyone at the
same airport flying the same task) and the OLC (nobody at the same
airport flying anywhere). The former has its drawbacks in terms of
cost, logistics, etc. while the latter is not really a competition in
the sense that you can't compare a flight in the California mountains
with a flight in eastern Ohio.

Competitions like the Governor's Cup which require folks to fly in the
same general area on a racing task give you a chance to get some sense
of how you stack up against other pilots in a (reasonably) realistic
racing setting. By picking a task area that includes several
gliderports, it's possible to create either assigned tasks, MATS, or
AATs which are fair to everyone. Looking at a map, I can see many
places in the world where this is possible - the UK and Germany just
for instance; any place that has a reasonable density of gliding sites
will work. All it takes is a few clubs to get together and set up
standard tasks that can be accessed from each of the respective
airfields.

So, it may be that the fully centralized contest appeals to a limited
number of people, while the completely decentralized contest may not be
"racing" in the traditional sense. But, there is certainly a middle
ground that deserves to be further explored and promoted.

http://home.netcom.com/~pappa3/

Erik Mann
LS8-18 (P3)