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How about we move the whole affair up 500 feet?



John Cochrane

Completely agree with moving it up 500 feet, in the old days, if you arrived 6 ft below the hard deck (the ground), you stayed there....

However having the 500ft floor only in the finish cylinder, with all the speed points at risk, does seem to incentivize low thermaling in an area that has high concentration of (perhaps) head down pilots. The pilot might even feel more comfortable trying to climb there due to the proximity of the airport.

Here is a suggestion, put the 500 ft hard deck out to 4 miles. Once you make your 4 mile call you are over a hard deck. You still need to come into the finish cylinder, everything remains the same, but once you fall under the 500 ft hard deck your done, join the landing traffic. If your final glide is marginal, and you think this is likely, you will want to stop and try to climb outside the hard deck, where the increased radius will help spread out the traffic.