As I wrote privately:

1) I think a reasonable handicap range as proposed makes a ton of sense. As an owner of a current generation standard class ship (LS8), I can only see upside to having more guys participate. I manage to lose by 7-8% to the big guns in the class pretty routinely, so I don't see somebody coming out of the woodwork and winning the nats thanks to a 2% bump. If a guy/gal in a DG-300 can get 98% of Chip Garner's or Mark Keene's score, he/she won the contest in my book.

2) More importantly, I think we HAVE to come to grips with the fact that the combination of a very large country (long way to drive), proliferation of classes, decrease in gliding population, and change in the lifestyle for all but the very rich or retired means that the traditional idea of a single nationals may be due for a review. As much as I enjoy the stories of Dick Schreder packing the family into the Winnebago and rushing from Ohio to Dry Gulch California on a Thursday night, it ain't happening for this 40-something with 2 kids, 2 cats, a dog, and a very understanding wife. Using Montague as an example, it's 4 days of hard driving each way. Realistically, that means 3 full weeks off from work at a bare minimum, assuming I get there and have to hope for the two practice days to get a handle on the "lay of the land." To have any shot at being there with enough time to relax and regroup and get in a few flights ahead of time (what I need to do well at a "technical" site), it means 4 weeks. Last time I checked, I have 4 weeks of vacation plus 2 personal days. Sorry honey, you and the kids have fun at the beach, I can't make it...

Since contest sites and people willing to host a nationals are in short supply, I don't think we can try to "mandate" central locations. We have to take what we can get. But, maybe we need to look at "national ranking contests" as opposed to a single nationals. Perhaps offer the option for a West, Central, and East "national ranking contest" which can be run in conjunction with regionals (shooting for 2 out of three - e.g. West/East, West/Central, East/Central). Most nationals already are either doubling up or running along with a regionals to get the volume, so that's not a big change in terms of logistics. The big challenge is to figure out the critera for this. There has to be "qualilty competition", but I expect that something like "a minimum of X pilots with a ranking above Y" could be handled without too much fuss.

Something to think about...

P3