On Jan 26, 7:56*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
Is there any way to hijack this thread back to Rick's post? Mandatory
flarm vs 99% voluntary at Uvalde, how Flarm will make euro and us
flarms interoperable (of course they will), *FCC legalities, how US
Uvalde organizers will handle flarm are non-issues that *none of us
knows anything about.

Rick asked about the insane (my opinion) 13.5 meter class, including
the momentous issue of water ballast. I responded with, let's split
club in two instead. He asked about handicaps in Arcus class (sorry,
20 m double seat), wgc locations, various "safety" measures. All these
and more seem like far more important and contentious items on the IGC
agenda.

Can't we give him and other IGC delegates some more useful feedback
before the meeting?

John Cochrane

13.5 meter - John your comments seem to make sense to me. The other
morning I was thinking about it and the answer seemed obvious. A 13.5
meter, ballasted Sparrowhawk. That is, if they allow ballast. I like
your suggestion of just making it the 13.5 meter handicapped class,
but the IGC already denied handicaps once. I guess they could change
their mind. Looking at the sailplane directory I picked out the
following likely contenders in a 13.5 meter race and their US
handicaps:

Russia - 1.145
L33 - 1.18
SZD-59 - 1.04
PW-5 - 1.18
Sparrowhawk - 1.17

So maybe, re-defining the class to be 13.5 meters or less with a (US)
handicap of 1.1 or greater would be the way to go. Or if you want to
be even more limiting run the handicap range from 1.1 to 1.2. But
then I wouldn't be able to fulfill my dream of flying my Cherokee II
in the Worlds...

20 meter 2 seat - I guess it depends on what the IGC wants the class
to be. You are basically talking about three types here, right? Duo
Discus, DG-1000, and Arcus? Handicap it and all three will show up
and you'll probably have a pretty popular class. It seems to me there
are a fair number of people who fly their Duo's and DG's in contests
in the US. The last I knew there was ~1 Arcus in the US. But if they
want to encourage further development in the 20 meter 2 seater class
then it will be the Arcus class until something better comes along.