The idea does work. If you don't want it, that's another issue.

1. Someone here already pointed out that a pilot's motivation to not land out is partially about points, for sure, but also about the various practical hardships (plus embarrassment) that result from not making it home. The incremental difference in flying behavior would be small at best.

JC: We'll see about that. However, the point is not to stop, regulate or force pilots to do anything, to supplant pilot judgement, and so on. All we do is remove a temptation. If you choose to thermal below 500 feet, that's up to you, but you will not get any contest points for doing it. We eliminate those campfire stories about thermaling over a teacup and winning the day..

In practice, I notice most pilots on recreational cross countries are pretty good at giving up around 500 feet. The traces from contest crashes are full of much lower thermaling -- down to 150 feet in one case.

In any case, the point is not to force pilots to change behavior. The point is merely to stop rewarding such behavior with contest points. And, to remove the occasional very low save from the set of tricks that help you to do well at contests.


2. The fact that you have scored the poor SOB as landing out due to his "hard deck" altitude, does not place a safe landing beneath him. If the next turnpoint is straight ahead and the best farm field was back over there, one's problems and temptations are not magically resolved by a hard deck rule. The exercise of marginally bad judgement about where to turn back for a safe landing under hard deck rules has a very good chance of having a quite similar consequence as exercising marginally bad judgement under present rules and circumstances. To a significant degree, the problem is moved, but not eliminated.

JC: Again, again, again, the point is not to regulate pilot judgement. Yeah, dude, you have to look out the window and not count on rules to tell you what to do. All it does is to remove a temptation that when things have gone to pot and you're under 500 feet, make your best pilot decision and we won't tempt you with points.


3. There is no way for a pilot in his cockpit to know whether he has become subject to the rule or not. GPS makes only a crude estimation of altitude. Pressure based altitude works at the home airport where reference pressure is known indirectly by field elevation referencing before takeoff and after landing. The pilot is able to set his altimeter at the home airport. At a remote location late in the day, the pilot will not have a pressure reference available to him and consequently will not know his altitude accurately enough for the proposed purposes. His altimeters are not accurate and furthermore he has no ability to guess how well the scorer's interpolation of local pressure will play out over time and map position. The result will be, that for competitive reasons, he will need to assume that he is not landed out -- likely all the way until exactly the same height at which he would have otherwise committed to a landing. The idea doesn't work.

JC: Absolutely false. Gee, how do we handle the hard ceiling, and the start gate top? With an SUA file, pressure altitude, and a readout on your glide computer that tells you if you've busted the limit. Same here. The hard deck would be a set of stepping stone SUAs in 500 foot increments. You are over an SUA with, say 1000' MSL top. When the pressure altitude on your glide computer says 499, you're done. (US rules would likely put in a graduated penalty, but you get the idea)

Monitoring an altitude floor is no harder than monitoring an altitude top.

Again, let's get over "it can't work." It can, easily, especially at flatland sites. The real argument is "I wanna keep thermaling at 300 feet" and I don't mind if others beat me by doing so." That's one worth having.

John Cochrane