While Scoring the Region 8 contest I asked this exact question. I
think I talked to Guy about it but now I don't remember, it might have
been one of the previous scorers in attendance.

I confirmed that the finish alititude is caluclated off the feild
elevation at the beginning of the flight. The theory I heard for
this is that the pressure typically changes through out the day to
make calculating it this way generally give the pilot the benefit of
the doubt.

I confirmed this on several flight logs that had low finishes, that if
it had calculated it on the landing elevation the program would have
scored the finish even lower.


Now the feature that I and several other pilots disagreed with was
scoring a low finish as a Rolling Finish. I am not sure where this
practice comes from but it seems like a poor practice to me. It means
that the pilot that is 10 feet low on the finish and doesn't realize
it get penalized for coming back to the airport and flying a normal
pattern because he doesn't realize the clock is still running. What
this practice promotes is if a pilot is even close to being low they
are encouraged to dive for the runway and land as soon as possible to
get the clock stopped.

In my opinion the clock should stop as soon as the pilot enters the
cylinder. We shouldn't have pilots in the finish cylinder still
racing.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL