Noel,

2) Regarding "Winning" - I have the revised edition and have read it
twice. *I'm reading it a third time in the weeks leading up to the
contest, just to stay fresh (since I'm in the middle of work hell and
its early in the season to get a lot of flying in).

A good start. The Italian book on Racing Sailplanes, although a poor
translation, is also a good read.


3) The "300 foot finish window" suggestion is a no-go. *A range of
altitude with an exactly equal penalty to offset the time-gain won't
work, because a zero-sum solution doesn't encourage folks to do
anything but push hard to go as fast as possible and just nick through
at minimum altitude... You end up right back at the same situation
we're at today. :-P *Worse yet, you may wind up with people trying to
pull up at the last second to regain altitude and avoid that penalty
and "game the system" - if they make a better-than-expected final
glide to that minimum altitude.

I disagree (and this comes from 10 years of contest finishes, both
line and cylinders). If there is no penalty to finishing within a
reasonable window, there is no incentive to pull up to reach an
arbitrary (and impossible to determine in the cockpit in real time)
altitude. The objective is to make a point-neutral "finish window"
that is big enough that the pilot can fly through it with minimal
heads-down time. You would probably have to have a pretty severe
penalty for finishing low (automatic rolling finish?) to discourage a
diving finish. The current system does not encourage that - it still
rewards a perfect, 501' finish, but has less of a penalty for pooching
it than last year.

The old 50' finish line was a lot easier (and in my opinion, just as
safe, if flown intelligently) But it does require a big airfield if a
lot of gliders are finishing at the same time. I'm not holding my
breath to see it again, though, since it drives the safety nazis
absolutely bonkers!