On Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 7:39:29 AM UTC-8, XC wrote:

To use another analogy because some think I am being a luddite. When we went from maps and cameras to GPS it was like writers moving from pen and paper or a typewriter to a word processor or a computer. It made writing, or in our case navigating, easier and faster. Unlimited use of FLARM in contests often amounts to plagiarism or stealing some else's work. The idea that everyone doing it will lead to some bright new future for our sport is wrong minded in my opinion. Use of unlimited FLARM displays in contests will lead to reduced brilliance.

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Luddite is an overly dramatic term - but I do think you are revising history a bit. I recall serious and impassioned debates over the years on lots of technology topics. I recently spoke to one of the former members of the RC who voted against allowing GPS. His reasons were about changing the spirit of glider racing.

I got lost every single day one particularly hazy Regionals at Cordele. Not just a little lost - a LOT lost. I got so lost one day at the Standard Class Nationals at Hutchinson that I had to land in a plowed field (every small town in Kansas looks the same from the air unless they label their rooftops - which only some do). Navigation by dead reckoning is definitely a skill and managing final glides without a computer to do all the math for you was part of how races were won and lost back in the 70s and 80s. There was a time when having a calculator in a high school math test was considered cheating. Same argument for gliding - 'stupid' people who couldn't work a wiz wheel would achieve scores they didn't deserve and contest results would be invalid.

We got over it.

I truly don't see material differences in the principles involved here and I see the magnitude of the changes in racing from Flarm or weather radar or even a God-map of every track on course as less transformative to the sport than, say, being able to mark a thermal I climbed in, head out in to the blue to make some needed miles or a turnpoint, and come back to it for a saving climb (though not always - and rarely as good the climb as when I left). Speed to fly variometers make much more difference in scores than tracking a pilot 3 miles ahead of you - who you would otherwise track at 1.5 miles ahead of you (with a much better result if actual data from races is a guide). Materials technologies have transformed glider performance enabling thinner, lighter, ultra laminar flow airfoils that allow for cruise climbing, leaving thermalling skills - and older generations of gliders - effectively in the dustbin competitively.

We ought to come to a collective view on what is the most perfect and pure technology level for the sport, that of 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005 or 2015? Our views of these things evolve over time - perhaps it is generational or perhaps we all get comfortable with technological progress. As a person who needs to think up rules and procedures to restrict, inspect, detect, report, enforce and penalize when we want to hold back the tide of technological progress I can tell you that this is one of the more challenging and onerous ones for organizers because it will all work on the one thing no one is going to get pilots to give up - the $50-500 phone they already carry in their pocket. The pace of technological change from the Internet of Things, Cloud and Mobile is only accelerating, so fasten your safety belts.

Even for pilots who flew the 2015 Nationals the view on what to do for Nationals was statistically evenly split between stealth mandatory and not mandatory by rule. Nationals pilots voted slightly against mandating stealth by rule for Regionals. For everyone else expressing an opinion it was more than 2:1 against - and we didn't even poll all the OLC guys we'd like to attract to racing, but you probably know already what they think. However, rule-making is not purely democratic, and it shouldn't be the case that we simply take votes and write rules to enforce the popular views of the moment. We elect people to the RC to take a deeper and longer view of things and help keep the sport thoughtfully ahead of the evolutions and trends that impact it - and hopefully make it more accessible, enjoyable and fair in the process. What pilots want and think is an input - but only an approximate guide.

As for me, I prefer more contest participation over more contest technology inspection. Putting up technological barriers is mostly a wasteful and ultimately fruitless exercise - and I believe fruitless in this case will get here faster than most people think - perhaps as fast as 2016 or 2017.

9B

(Sorry Chip I didn't fly Harris Hill - but I plan to fly Nephi if that helps)