On Jul 30, 5:46*am, Papa3 wrote:
On Jul 29, 3:20*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:





On Jul 29, 10:38*am, chris wrote:

I wanted to clarify something about an Out & Return route.

My planned flight is for a 500k O&R. * I want to use
my home airport as a remote start,
fly 10km south to turnpoint 1
fly 250km north to turnpoint 2
fly 240km south and finish at my home airport [same as the remote
start].

Does this fit the FAI sporting code for an O&R definition? *The
wording says something about a route with one turn point. *But if you
mix in a remote start&finish along the first leg do you then end up
with 2 turnpoints?

Is there a fai document that shows remote start options with drawings?

Chris

Here "turnpoint 1" is your home airport? Part of the problem may be
you are confusing some of the nomeclature. Turnpoints are not start or
finish points. A waypoint can be either a start point, a finish point
or a turnpoint (and yes there are some types of flights where you can
use the same waypoint as a different beast if you use it more than
once in the same flight...).

The definition in the Sporting Code for an O&R is very simple.

"OUT AND RETURN FLIGHT: *A CLOSED COURSE having two LEGS."

and

"A CLOSED COURSE has the START and FINISH at the same WAY POINT."

---

Do a little SC3 reading and you should be able to see that at the
broadest level of FAI sporting code a closed course has a start point
(declared or otherwise), a finish point (declared or otherwise) and
one turnpoint (must always be declared). Where you take off from, or
get off tow (if using a declared start point) is not part of the
flight performance, but is documented for other reasons to prove you
made the flight etc., and neither is where you land part of the actual
flight performance (unless for you are using the landing as the
finish). Here you normally declare the finish, that gives you the
benefit as well of finishing at altitude to meet height loss
requirements. The height loss applies from your start point fix to
your finish point fix, not off tow etc.

What exactly are you trying to do? A record (exactly what one?) or a
diamond goal flight? *For a O&R/goal badge flight or O&R speed record
you need to declare the start and finish. A free out & return distance
is different but I'm guessing this is not what you are doing. For any
declared start/finish points you could fly from off tow to the start
point 550m or 55km, it makes no difference which is why the sporting
code does not talk about "local" and "remote" starts similar to how
you are trying to.

The usual important advice applies --

3. To make the any course actually closed your finish point needs to
be within 1,000m of that, so be careful when using FAI sectors for
start and finish, your actual start and finish point fixes used need
to be within 1 km. The way that is actually spelt out in the sporting
code is the start and finish FAI sector arms for closed courses are
1,000 m in length.

Darryl

And, FWIW, the start and finish can also be a line rather than a
sector. * In some situations, that is easier to visualize/construct.
But, the 1000 m constraint is still in play.

p3

And Badge/record start lines are ways 1.000m long so this requirement
is automatically met. I think mistakes with people not properly
closing a closed course happens with FAI sectors used as start and
finish and people missing that then
shortens those arms to 1,000m.

And I've seen the opposite confusion where people do not realize that
a sector OZ for a turnpoint or a sector OZ for a non closed course
start and finish have unlimited arm length. confusion probably
encouraged by settings in popular soaring software. Some pilots also
think the finish/start *have* to happen crossing into or out of the
sector OZ and do not realize that any GPS fix within the sector can be
used (very handy for picking start and finish fixes to meet height
loss requirements).

Darryl



Darryl