It's a tough situation. In 20 years of racing I've never been in a
situation where the safety finish was in effect. So, many (most?) of
us probably are only vaguely aware that the option exists and have
only a loose grasp on the rule.

Wow! I've personally experienced at least three different 'safety
fiinish' situations in eastern regionals and nationals. Come to think
of it, two of these were at CCSC - maybe my home soaring area isn't
quite as benign as I think! ;-).

Regarding the altitudes, it really doesn't make too much difference.
When you are faced with the situation, you get as much altitude as you
can, and then try and nick the cylinder without scaring yourself too
badly. Personally I like the cone idea, as it is easy to remember '5
miles per thousand feet'. With the current 5sm radius cylinder, If
you are more than 1000' above the home field (and this is usually easy
to confirm with the flight computer), you are good to go. At 10
miles, you need twice that. In between, you have to interpolate, but
its not too bad. Also, if the rule were very simple (like 200ft/
mile), then it might be possible to program it into soaring software
so you could simply enable a checkbox to change the glide calculations
from whatever you have as a polar to show '200ft per mile'.

Just my $0.02

Frank(TA)