What everyone is blowing off is that the finish is NOT about YOU and having a thrill at the finish, but the safety of the other pilots and ground personnel that your actions impact. Let's keep our eye on that ball.

Wow. This whole thread is fascinating - I'm looking at flying my first competitions this season, and finding I'm in way over my head. My comments are a bit off the main thread, but relevant to me and perhaps others that aren't competition pros.

The idea of thermaling at 500' AGL or lower is beyond my comprehension at this point in my soaring career, and entering a landing pattern at 500' - 700' from a mile out contrary to all my student piloting lessons (even though I can calculate that it is readily doable in my glider).

The rules themselves seem straightforward, even though I have little idea of how they play out in a contest. And the start and finish cylinder concepts seem straightforward. All I'm really interested in for my first tries is finishing each day, flying safely, not doing anything stupid, leaving plenty of margin, scoring some points, and having a challenge and fun (i.e. wanting to do it again).

I expect as time goes on, flying more contests will lead to my learning and appreciating the strategies and tactics discussed in a lot of this thread - but my main concerns are whether the current rules are in fact safe for a neophyte to contests and a relatively low-timer. From the discussions, I'm not getting a clear sense of whether they are or not (specifically as related to the finish).

I understand we are all subject to sometimes making dumb decisions, or the weather making our plans (and margins) vanish - but the rules should basically enable safe flying in contests, even accounting to some degree the wide variance in risk different pilots are willing to take under varying circumstances. Reassure me that the rules do enable basically safe flying in contests. I have to assume they do since the fatality rate doesn't seem to be something that draws headline attention.

Eric Bick