I've had disagreements with the Rules Committe over the years (no
comments, guys). But not about the scoring formulas per se. I do think
they're way too complicated for most pilots to understand but UH's
advice is good: just fly the glider. There are very few situations
where doing something cute or counterintuitive just to enhance your
score will benefit you (the airport landing bonus is one of the few
examples, and I'm sure I'll get pushback on that). I flew many years
with ONLY ASTs and definitely don't want to go back! I don't like it
when CDs call MATs on days when the weather is fairly uniform and
predictable--it's lazy--but on risky days, I like having the option of
going where it's soarable rather than flying directly into a T-storm
over the TP.

My primary issue is with the way the Rules change every year and the
impact this has on the scoring program. The more changes you make to
the scoring formulas, the more chances there are for bugs to creep
into the scoring software. And most pilots will never pick this up
unless the errors are substantial.

And right now the burden is on the pilot to protest any scoring
problems, whether they relate to the scorer's mistakes or to the
software itself. The only real way to do that is to take Winscore with
you to the contest and score side by side with the scorer. Winscore
does a good job, but it's not perfect. It's process dependent (read:
the scorer has to do some manual stuff). And it sometimes has bugs.
When a bunch of us had questions about the scores at a regional
contest last year, I installed Winscore and rescored the contest and
found situations where the scores were wrong based on the rules. Yeah,
a savvy scorer might have caught it, but no pilot would have. This
particular item didn't change the overall winners but it did change
the daily winners and overall placings. I strongly suspect it affected
other contest results last year, as well.

In the interests of fairness and responding to pilot requests, the
Rules Committee makes changes to the scoring nearly every year. I
would argue that they try too hard. Anyone who's ever been involved in
software development or the implementation or modification of a
software application knows that every single one of those changes has
the potential to introduce bugs. Yeah, most of them get caught during
testing, but not all. It's not like there are millions of Winscore
users paying big bucks every year to compensate someone for making
certain it's 100% reliable. That said, we should be making Rules
changes only when there's a really good reason, and as infrequently as
possible.

The Rules Committee has done a good job of developing Rules that work
pretty well in most cases. Stop fooling around with them. Sometimes
trying to make something perfect just makes it worse.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA