I am with David Martin to a certain extent. Personally, I don't like the MAT tasks very much as a measure of flying skills, but they can be interesting to fly. Here's an example: On Day 2 during this year's Region 8 contest the CD shortened the Sports class MAT time from 3 to 2 hours, which in the hindsight turned out to be a mistake. After the weather improved, I decided to extend my flight and go east to check out the weather conditions there. The main reason for doing that was that I didn't want to waste half of a very interesting day sitting on the ground (or orbiting around the start gate collecting bugs). Eventually, my task time was 4:13 (more than double the minimum) and I had a very interesting and enjoyable flight. BTW, I won that day.

Being a polite peacekeeping Canadian, I would like to suggest a middle way. I would propose that SSA adopts the FAI rules and simply extends them with the inclusion of a MAT task, maybe only for the regional contests. That should satisfy both Sean and the pilots and CDs who like the flexibility of the MAT tasks.

Branko Stojkovic
Russia AC-5M XYU