On Tuesday, August 13, 2013 1:52:11 PM UTC-4, Evan Ludeman wrote:
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

MAT should be called as last resort task just to have contest day. Doesn't matter how you structure MAT it is very unfair task.
Not flown in Worlds, is good for new contest pilots only( Regionals)

1. Finishing task without claiming assigned TP and receiving speed points is very unfair and distorting results.
2013 18M nationals- long MAT , leading pilots 20 minutes ahead of the group arrive in the finish area, condition deteriorate
options:
Finish task 20 minutes under time and be safe
Fly to the next TP and risk land out or overtime.
Those which arrived low and late cut task short and were rewarded with the same points as pilots arriving 20 minutes earlier, here is better part -those who took risk and went to the next TP landed out or didn't reach TP and returned after time and were penalized heavily. Results slow pilots received bonus for poor results and were rewarded very well.

2. MAT has time limit, AST has no time limit , total different strategy absolutely useless for worlds preparations.

3. I think only 2013 18M Nationals had AST tasks (Thank You Eric)
No other FAI class had AST in 2013 and 2012 18M Nationals had only MAT.
We are flying gliders of L/d of 50 to cover 100 miles we need 4 thermals or less , how hard is to fly AST, it could be slow but who cares we are flying contest.

40 years ago we flew gliders of L/d 35 and we flew only AST and long tasks were finished. How hard it could be to fly AST in glider of L/d 50

4. Tasks set with time limit are most of the time under called and we are seating for 2 hours above airport waiting to start in the best 2 or 3 hours condition when we could fly 5 hours .
Driving 3 days to Nationals contest and fly MAT only is waste of time as it is no difference from OLC which could be done at home with more time of flying at fraction of cost.
Jerzy Szemplinski