On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:57:22 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 11:48:49 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:

To a couple of your points:

This kind of contest has worked well out of Truckee, which is not flat terrain or homogenous conditions. Certainly it would be possible to intentionally call a task more favorable to one end or the other of the handicap, just as it is possible to avoid doing so.

The high performance gliders do not have to go to an exact point - it depends on how the scratch glider is defined. The highest performing glider in the competition typically still has a cylinder, which can be made as large as is thought fair, so they do get to chose a favorable turn location within limits (that are a little narrower than the low performance gliders).

Many of the same considerations apply to an AAT, in that the high performance gliders MUST go further into the cylinder or risk not making minimum times, even if conditions at the far edge are not favorable.

In perfectly flown tasks, the low performance gliders are markers exactly half the time, and the high performance gliders makers the other half.

In any handicapping scheme, there is unfairness due to conditions. Any contest type rewards certain tactical skills more than others.

Since you seem to understand this task, can you explain to me what problem we have with the current tasks used in the US that this task solves?
Another way- what benefit does it provide over existing tasks?
Thanks
UH

This kind of task is not better or worse than another, flown in isolation. It has slightly different tactical considerations. I like it in conjunction with a simultaneous start, as I have mentioned before. I like that because it is the only sailplane competition that is like a real race: if you are ahead, you are ahead. Other types of tasks are properly called a time trial, not a race. With large cylinder AAT and MAT tasks, there is little difference between them and OLC, might as well fly OLC - costs less and I can fly my day. An AT in a meter class with a simultaneous start would have the same benefits, provided the gliders were really identical.

The only reason for pilots to get together at a specified time and place is to race head to head against others. Racing against the clock can be done anytime, anyplace. I am rather uninterested in traditional US competition where you start at some random time, fly around a loosely defined course occasionally seeing others, then learn how you did after dinner. I got interested in racing again due to the handicapped distance task (and, I will add, Flarm). Take those away and I will go back to touring, OLC style.

Let me ask this: are the currently used tasks so successful that there is an increasing number of participants leading to a full schedule of oversubscribed races?