The Oracle of Brighton, MI might find, as I did, some interesting stats relating to pilot ranking and success with the "thinking" tasks, the MAT and TAT.

It turns out that the DJ's, 7V's and DB's finish higher with the tasks that require more than the ability to slavishly chase gaggles as is the case with the AT.

The frequent mislabeling of the AT as the "AST" leads me to believe that the detractors believe a pilot's score for the AT is based on speed while the MAT and TAT scores are calculated differently. Of course all three are tests of speed.The difference is the MAT and TAT add on another level of difficulty by favoring experience, weather insight and (sometimes) local knowledge. The inevitable score leveling present with the AT may feel good to the runners up, but it certainly doesn't represent a ranking of the pilots total soaring abilities.

Another task related subject that has been flailed to death on this forum is the idea that our WGC results would be better if we called more AT's in the US. Check out the Club Class results from Finland and you will see that the only task we won was an AT. Looks like we need to brush up on TAT's (AAT's in WGC parlance).

Karl Striedieck