Everything I have read elsewhere about the Club class is that it has led to
highly developed and therefore high $$ gliders, with masses of development.
Winglets, profiling, special sealing, detail detail detail. Now some
people are capable of doing this – either through skills, having
facilities to (Moffatt-like) saw the wingtips off their glider and
refinish, or having large numbers of dollars to spend to get someone else
to do it. Europe has its club system with well-organized repair and
maintenance facilities and they prepare the hell out of their gliders.
Sam with his LS-1 fits into this mould. He said at the Seniors one time
that he had spent some hundreds of hours fixing his glider; he didn’t
indicate how much it cost.

Well there are not too many of us here with the same dedication, the same
facilities or skills (or spare $$).

The greatest thing about the US Sports class is that it is definitely
"you fly what you brung" and the handicap system more or less evens
things out and the best pilots win, regardless of weather. There is no
added expense in any sense (time or money) over and above what makes sense
to fly cross country. Just look at the spread of aircraft performance
last year at Parowan. The system worked. It will be interesting to see
who takes Dave Stephenson’s earlier examples – and Nick Kennedy’s this
year – at next year’s Sport Nats and see who works out just which glider
and which handicap (Ka-8 or Nimbus?) will give some minor advantage in the
probable Elmira weather. But for the vast majority of entrants, the Sports
class will provide super, tough and even competition.

Please keep the pressure up to ensure that the US does not throw this
wonderful class out, or screw it over in the interests of some theoretical
gain in world contests. The fact is that the US is now not competitive in
the world, since world-class gliding (the grand prix aside) has become a
team event. Most leading overseas team pilots train together often for
over a year before the worlds, learn and practice flying team (illegal in
US contests), and have national facilities to train at or clubs that
organize training for team members or potential team members. In the US,
soaring is an individual sport (other than the beer etc after flying).

I will vote accordingly.




At 12:56 27 September 2008, wrote:
On Sep 24, 5:38=A0am, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:37:40 +0000, Sam Giltner wrote:
Martin Gregorie:
Please expand on the handicap system that you use and the gliders
allowed in the Club Class and the Sports Class under this system.
Thanks, Sam

In summary: in the UK "Club Class" includes any glider in the IGC
Club
Class list and any glider with a handicap of 98 or below on the BGA
handicaps table. See page 26 in

http://www.gliding.co.uk/forms/competitionrules2008.pdf

for the full, gory details and page 18 for adjustments if the glider
is
modified with tiplets, root fairings, turbulators, etc.

As a concrete example of the Club/Sport split, the Discus 1a or 1b,
ASW-20 and ASW-20f all have a handicap of 98. All other Discus 1s and
all
other ASW-20s have higher handicaps: the ASW-20b,c have 100. The
lowest
assigned handicaps are the Falke (46) and Slingsby T-21 (50). The
highest
is the ASW-22bl and Nimbus 4 (118). To apply the BGA handicap,
multiply
the actual speed by 100 and divide by the handicap.

--
martin@ =A0 | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org =A0 =A0 =A0 |

I'm a little hazy on the Club Class rules. But if it really includes
any ship with less than 98 on the BCA handicap list then the argument
that Club Class is a lot fairer than Sports Class loses a lot of
validity, as does the argument that handicap inaccuracies can confer
significant advantages in a contest. An ASW 27 has a handicap of 104
versus 98 for an ASW 20 - 6%. If you assumed the handicap was in
error by say 20% that would be a 1% advantage confered one way or the
other. That hardly seems grounds for claiming the system is unfair.
Variations in a single pilot's performance run 5-10 times that amount
typically.

Also, if I understand, all lower handicap gliders can legally fly club
class, which if true means that Club Class includes gliders with
handicaps in the 60s and 70s, so you haven't really narrowed the
spread meaningfully.

9B