On Monday, January 20, 2014 6:42:14 PM UTC-8, wrote:

You did not provide a logical reason why this big change (scoring as land out) was made rather then just raising the finish height and leaving gradual penalty.

The reason and logic and review and deliberation is in the RC meeting notes.. To recap:

Logical reason is you should not present competitors with a situation where they can score higher points by deciding to go for the finish cylinder at an altitude from which they cannot reach the airport.

You are correct, you could set (based on current rules for max distance from the airport and max radius of the finish cylinder) a mandatory MFH of around 1250' and a graduated penalty of around a point per foot. If you force a smaller, closer finish cylinder you can bring MFH down a bit, but there are serious objections to a higher MFH based on airport configuration, proximity to ridge, etc.

Again, If this explanation doesn't suffice I'd be happy to walk anyone through the math and logic offline.

9B