Soaring Spot is just one example of US isolation. The SSA actively seems to do everything possible to isolate US Soaring from the world soaring community. US rules and contests are unique and only Canada (with its own major modifications) uses the US system (with some reluctance I sense). I'm not sure if that is going to continue...

As a US citizen, we have no choice other than to follow these SSA policies. It is very frustrating as they also protect the tangent they have created fairly aggressively from a political perspective. Disgust with FAI rules dominate the news articles and many discussions for example. It basically goes like this: The FAI/IGC rules are bad. The tasking is bad. Etc, etc. How would most Americans really know? They'll never experience it.

Today and for years, there is very little in common between SSA contests and FAI. All of the systems are different. Zero commonality. Some argue that doesn't matter. Contests are still about climbing better and running better. Sure, but that is a massive oversimplification. We have completely different rules in the USA (with highly complex scoring formulas designed to "make soaring...fair," unique scoring systems, our own tasks (zero and one turn mats, long mats 30-mile radius TAT's and almost no assigned tasks), our own handicaps, etc, etc, etc. Those driving this policy are dug in like ticks and believe the USA's soaring tangent is noble and necessary. In my opinion, the SSA's tangent strongly isolates the US soaring community from the worldwide soaring community. In several very important ways.

US pilots are not included in FAI rankings. No, no. We have the SSA pilot rankings. Completely separate. Very rarely are US contest results included in the FAI rankings and any US pilot on the list has a highly inaccurate ranking.

Our contests are only on our (fairly poor, stale, very low traffic) US websites and social media sites, greatly handicapping and limiting the audience and interest. I would love to see the statistics.

The rest of the world very likely does not care at all about the US websites. I doubt they check them very often. If at all...

All of this effort to create a unique and "better" system simply isolates the US (and Canada).

Just my 2 cents...