Sean:

There is a reason CDs and task advisers call so few ATs. In the winter on RAS ATs sound great. At 10 AM running a real contest they don't.

ATs necessarily use a small fraction of the soaring day. If a 70% speed pilot can finish, that means the top pilot left 30% of the soaring day on the table. A few days of flying 3 hour tasks on 5-6 hour days (4 hours for slow pilot to finish task, 1 hour to lanuch, 15 minutes to open gate, 15 minutes to get everyone going) and people start grumbling that OLC lets them do a lot more flying.

Or, the CD sets long tasks and the beginners land out day after day. Then they go home and don't go back.

That's on great days with predictable weather. Your CD and task advisers notice quickly that not every day is perfect. Thunderstorms, and the whole fleet lands out at turnpoint 1, while the sky is booming everywhere else. This just isn't fun.

But the rules allow AT! This is not a rules question. Volunteer to be task adviser. Run an all AT contest at Ionia. See if people want it so bad to show up. Lobby task advisers at your contests to run more ATs -- and to persuade all the other pilots that it's a great idea. There is absolutely nothing in the rules stopping anyone from running an all -AT contest. If they want to do it.

John Cochrane