On Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 2:43:57 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
It's a very interesting idea. A couple of questions.

What are the implications for leeching and does the handicapping account for the fact that this likely makes it easier for lower handicap gliders to hang back a bit and use higher performance gliders as markers throughout the task.

In uniform weather this seems fine, but what about tasks where flying farther requires the higher performance gliders to face blue holes, thunderstorms, getting off convergence lines and the like.

These were questions that were asked of me when I asked some experienced pilots about it and I had no experience from which to provide an answer.

9B

Andy, I can answer those questions from some experience.

Everybody has to fly the same course, but higher performance gliders must fly further into the turnpoint cylinder than lower performance, as their radius is smaller. If one is leeching from the other, they will loose each other at each turn point (or at least, the low performance will turn first and then the high performance might leech temporarily in passing to the next turnpoint). The contests we have flown at Truckee like this are simultaneous start, or effectively so. In a perfectly flown contest by all participants, they will see each other only at the start, once between each turnpoint (though maybe not then - see below), and at the simultaneous finish.

For the most part, the weather will be similar, since the handicap difference in radius is usually only a few miles at each turnpoint. Of course it can happen that the only thermal in the area is right at the low performance or high performance turnpoint, which will favor that glider. If the difference in handicap is large, then the best course between two handicapped turnpoints might differ which again might favor one or the other. Some of this can be mitigated by choosing intelligent turnpoints to handicap (not all of them need be).

If run with a simultaneous start and open Flarm, this kind of racing is far more like real racing than traditional US sailplane racing (which is really a time trial). You start at the same time, you can see how you are doing against your fellow competitors, in between each handicapped turnpoint the difference is accounted for and you are even again. Just like real racing.