"Would a "hard deck" prevent us from making certain mistakes?"

No, and that's not the point. The hard deck removes the points incentive for making those mistakes. There is a big difference between a rule against doing something, a ban, an attempt to stop something, and removing a positive incentive to do something. Now, we have a positive incentive for very low-altitude saves. Removing that incentive will not "prevent" anyone from doing anything. But it will lower the temptation. There is a difference between a law against something and removing a government subsidy for it. (Economist talking)

We do this throughout soaring. We do not allow pilots to land two miles from the airport, race back, reassemble and fly again. When we did, there were some poorly assembled gliders. We ban gyros, not trusting pilot judgement. We put points penalties in place for flying in restricted airspace. We force pilots to carry parachutes, and insurance.

We do it throughout sports. The olympics tries to ban doping. Bicycle racing forces people to wear helmets. Hockey forces players to wear mouthguards. Interestingly in every case the competitors fought it tooth and nail, just as now. In each case, it is interesting that competitors didn't want to lose the advantage that taking risks gave them. But they ignored that a rule that applies to everybody applies to everybody.

All ye who proclaim that "I'm a sensible pilot, I would never do anything that dumb," should be clamoring for the hard deck to prevent those crazies from stealing a contest from you by thermaling low. They're out there, and they will.

The hard deck is good enough for navy top gun school. I guess they're not manly enough for you?

On mountain flying. A hard deck is easy to implement, I think we agree, at the flatland sites where we do 90% of contest flying. Just what logic says "it's hard to do for mountain flying so we shouldn't do it at all?"

John Cochrane