At 22:18 29 July 2007, Kirk.Stant wrote:
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
66



Hey Kirk,

I think if you have a 'zero penalty' band pilots will
tend to use it. I can't figure the difference between
and 700' finish with a 200' band and a 500' finish.

If you are going to try to ease up on the current 'all-or-nothing'
system adding a continuous penalty equal to some low,
but not minuscule, rate of climb. I think 30 to 60
seconds per 100' is reasonable. This would amount to
10-20 points on a long task and 20-40 points on a short
task if you finished 500' low - you could set 500'
under as the maximum penalty, or let it scale all the
way to worm-burner finishes (at a mile out!). The maximum
penalty could also apply to rolling finishes, or just
let the penalty for your actual finish height apply
irrespective of whether you roll or do a pattern. After
all, it's the finish height, not the shape of your
pattern that matters.

Or we could leave it to the CD's discretion. Then pilots
might try a little harder to not miss the finish height.

9B