BB,

Please excuse spelling errors as I type this quickly on my cell phone between meetings.

Your question misses the whole point. In fact I'm embarrassed for our sport when I read such comments. It's as if you RC guys are from a different dimension. You guys seem to consistently find very weak reasons to dilute and pervert the few good, clean, race centric tasks which remain in the USA. This is incredibly irritating.

Extra distance? No! No, no, no, NO! For the love of all things special, NOOOOOOO! That is the whole purpose of the Handicap Distnace Task (HDR). It's intended to be a real race!

Do I hear heads exploding in the distance? I said "race!" .......boom!

The HDR calculates a simple set distance requirement for each gliders handicap. It intentionally does not provide aloof freedoms to decide what you want to do. This is becuase that kills the idea of "racing" and creates a new sport entirely (OLC). A new paradigm. The whole point of the HDR task is simplicity and a fair, even, SIMPLE race between a range of different gliders. This is not intended to be an OLC or TAT task John. It is an effort to get away from it (more heads exploding in the distance....)

If your head is still intact, please try and stay with me here.

This IS (intentionally) NOT a timed task. The idea is for all competitors to get to the closest point in their ring as fast as possible and turn. No watches. No scoring formulas. No weather gambles (well, as few as possible). The shortest time wins. Wow!

Yes, lower performance gliders with larger diameter turn points may have more lateral range to work with. Depending on how it goes, I may define narrowed segments (pie shapes) to limit that lateral range for the low handicap gliders in Ionia (for example). Simple to do. An improvement I think.

TATs - Turn area tasks are depressing tasks because they allow far too much choice in A) what side of the turn cylinder to guess, gamble, put your chips on (and that is a significant part of the results). B) It also allows pilots to choose how far to go into various turn areas (this also significantly effects results). The average US "turn area" in our TAT tasks is 40 miles!

The (timed) TAT is, simply put, not much of a race at all. It's a timed, distance, weather gamble game. The task allows pilots to choose between tens of thousands of optional square miles to fly thru. It is intentionally free (barely constrained) and fundamentally completely different for each competitor, each day.

Some call the TAT a test of skill. The truth is that there is usually significant luck involved in the results. The variables available between A) widely different start times and B) three 40 mile diameter turn areas (for example) are absolutely ENORMOUS. This huge variability results in low quality, almost subjective competition results, especially at the beginner levels.

The TAT is also WILDLY over called in the USA (60-70% of our current tasks).. Here is the test: If glider pilots are able to reach both sides, and varying depths, of 3 turn cylinders (areas) THEN an ASSIGNED TASK would have worked out perfectly for this given content day! When you look at the IGC traces of most US tasks (over the past 5 years) you will see that that test fails the vast majority of the time!

Again, The TAT is a COMPROMISE TASK developed for dealing with less than perfect weather or wide handicap or skill range. It is intended to reduce land outs. It is not the ideal form of a competition becuase LUCK is a major element of the task. The area task allows gliders to (somehow, via formulas, rules, etc) "compete???" on an entirely different track...in other words...not a race at all. The area task is not a race, it's a compromise. Watered down. Muted. Boring. Annoying. A weather guessing task.

I don't care who you are. Nobody can predict the weather that perfectly. It's just to dynamic on a 50 mile scale. So to those who say they want a weather test, give me a break. An assigned task is a far better weather test becuase decisions are exponentially more critical as you must get back to the same exact points after each weather decision on each leg.

I stand amazingly opposed to the idea of extra distance being a good thing. It's THE WORST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF SOARING. Awful.

Sean