Lots of good points made.

I went flying yesterday and found that my SN10 has a beatiful digital
pressure altimeter readout, that is automatically calibrated before
takeoff to field elevation, and can be reset inflight to the latest
altimeter setting if desired.

I also found that my mechanical POS alitmeter lags about 100' during a
final glide, showing me that much higher that the SN10's no-friction
digital readout.

Guess what I'll be using from now on!

Back to the original subject (actually a spin off):

I still think the current hard cutoff at 500 ft is a poor setup, due
to the difficuty for the pilot to accurately judge his altitude at the
time of crossing the line. If the goal is to make pilots finish
higher (for whatever reason), then there needs to be a finish window
the pilot can aim for that if he accurately figures his final glide,
will not be penalized. Let's assume we can hit a 200' window - and
assume that 300' agl is the cutoff for a safe pattern. Setup the
scoring so anywhere in the 200 ft window (300'agl to 500'agl ) is
neutral - if below the nominal 500', then add the time it would have
taken to climb in (based on the climb rate in the last thermal). That
would remove any incentive to finish lower than 500', but give a
reasonable window to shoot for before a bigger penalty (automatic
rolling finish score) kicks in.

Comment? Obvious problems?

Kirk
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