On Tuesday, August 13, 2013 11:59:41 AM UTC-4, Luke Szczepaniak wrote:
Short tasks and few enormous turn areas rather than a larger number of smaller turns are choices made by the CD and task advisers, often in response to pilot complaining. If you want the opposite, talk to the CD don't complain about the rules.





In the last 5 years I have yet to fly a contest in which a task was over

called, inversely, I have flown many in which tasks were under called or

the day was scrubbed way too early. Personally I much rather land out

due to an over call knowing that I used the whole day to the fullest

rather then come home with a sky in which I could keep flying for

another 2 hours!



I have not heard (maybe I chose not to listen...) a single pilot

complaining that a task was too hard or too long. I do (or choose to?)

hear many who agree with me that we need to use the whole day and need

more assigned tasks. Even at the last US 15m nationals, where Tim did

an excellent job calling tasks and using the whole day, we did not have

a single Assigned Task - this nats decided the US team that is going to

the WGC next year! We can complain to the CD's all we want but it is

the RC that has the authority, perhaps we need more emphasis on the

wording or clearer direction for the CD's coming from the top.



If you want to improve the results on the world stage look to the task

types and duration being flown at FAI contests, we need to train in

similar conditions to be competitive. For the pilots who don't want

that and rather come home early and have a beer the answer is simple -

SPORTS Class...



Luke Szczepaniak


In general, I agree with Luke that our tasking tends to be overly conservative at std/15/18m class regionals. I was personally *greatly* relieved by the tasking at Hobbs, but only because I was new to the environment and not flying very well. It's easy to say from the safety of my office that 15m & open nats deserves stronger tasking and if some crank takes an old glider to a nationals at a venue he's not really prepped to fly, well tough. I had fun. I think :-).

I did encourage the 15m task advisors & CD to use smaller circles on the TATs. But the thing is: weather is uncertain, the schedule is tight, the advisors are there to race, not task set and the pressure is on to crank out a task that works, *quickly*. Tasking well requires effort and more time and study than the CD and advisors are likely to have available. If you want really good, creative, sharp tasking, you probably need to make this a separate job as is done for WGC.

The game has changed since the days of yore when we really didn't know very much about the weather, the tasks were less flexible, the CD took his best guess and we dealt with the consequences (including a lot of land outs). We can likely do better today (with better wx information), but there is no getting around the fact that big circles and MATs are going to reduce the risk of landouts.

My $0.02.

Evan Ludeman / T8