As always, John makes some excellent points. As occasionally happens, I don't necessarily agree with all of them.

Bob restated my thesis much more accurately and succinctly. It's not the risk, per se, that is appealing. It's mastering and managing the risk that keep me coming back every year.

Using the rules to reduce risk isn't new. We've been doing it as long as I've been flying, including: (skip to the bottom if you don't want a walk down soaring memory lane)

1. Eliminated the risks of high-speed retrieves from an early outlanding and hurried assembly before a quick relaunch.
2. Eliminated the risk of high-speed starts.
3. Reduced the collision risk of mass starts and eliminated the scoring risk that one or more pilots might be missed in the confusion.
4. Reduced the risk of heading out on course relatively low because of the old 1,000 m start gate altitude limit.
5. Eliminated the risk of low final glides, at least to the finish.
6. Eliminated the risk of low high-speed finishes.
7. Reduced the risks of catastrophic points penalties from relatively minor rules infractions with graduated penalties.
8. Eliminated the risk of being late in the launch queue and sitting on the ground while early launches start on course (relevant for old-style distance tasks and storm days).
9. Eliminated the risk of landing out simply because tasks were called under the philosophy that only half the field should finish.
10. Eliminated the risk of landouts on straight out and early area distance tasks.
11. Reduced the risk of flying with too little sleep from long flights and equally long retrieves occasioned by more aggressive tasking, including distance tasks.
12. Reduced the risk that one or a few pilots could gain a huge advantage through luck on an uncertain day (i.e., before devaluation became widespread).
13. Eliminated the risk of committing to a task set before the pilots' meeting that might be clearly inappropriate just a few hours later, which could result in mass landouts or a gross undercall.
14. Eliminated the risk that the manually operated start/finish gate might make an error, favoring or disadvantaging a pilot unfairly.
15. Eliminated risk that a pilot might attempt to achieve an advantage by [illegally] overloading his/her glider on a strong day.
16. Eliminated the risk that a pilot might illegally benefit and/or create a collision hazard and/or invite regulatory action from an airspace violation.
17. Reduced the risk of large numbers of gliders being forced to relight nearly simultaneously after being launched before soaring is possible.
18. Eliminated the risk of having to select a takeoff time in mid morning without knowing when the weather would become soarable.
19. Reduced collision risk by encouraging--and in some cases mandating--the use of FLARM technology.
20. Reduced the risk of being unable to locate a downed pilot by encouraging--and in some cases mandating--the use of ELTs.
21. Reduced the risk of landout damage by offering point-of-furthest-progress scoring and an airport bonus to incentivize pilots to land at airports.

I'm sure there are more. The point is that it's not out of line to consider another rules change to try to reduce the risk of pilots making mistakes when they are low. But is that what we want?

When I said that soaring without any risks wouldn't be as appealing, I wasn't referring to the above (mostly; I don't want to set off another debate about final glides and finish lines!).

Nor was I referring to the risk of, say, a midair collision, an uncertain event with disastrous consequences over which we have imperfect control.

But soaring isn't a video game (Condor excepted). We preemptively manage risk every time we turn our backs on the home airport and head out cross country, accepting the higher risk of damage from a possible land out. Mastering and managing that risk by flying well enough to return home while knowing how to pick a field and land in it safely if we can't is both exciting and satisfying, at least to me.

It's the same for flying a contest task on weak days when we otherwise wouldn't even bother to launch, much less attempt a cross-country flight, and for learning how to fly safely and competitively on ridges and in the mountains.

We all fly for different reasons. But for me, soaring would not have the same appeal if all we did was call short tasks on only the best days over landable flatlands. No one is suggesting that (yet). But the trend I see is towards a more regulated contest environment where we attempt to manage risks more through rules making (OK, scoring incentives), leaving less up to the pilot. That's not always a bad thing, just as free marketplaces need certain laws and regulations to prevent shortsighted and/or unethical players from profiting unfairly at the expense of others.

But we took navigation skills off the table years ago when we allow the use of GPS, making it easier for certain pilots (you know who you are!) to place well. We're already hearing that soaring is headed toward universal auxiliary power and the end of landouts, another skill from the old days.

For the sake of discussion, what hard deck would be proposed for flatland flying? Is the fact that some pilots could safely take it down to 500' while others would be at their limit at 1,000' mean we should set the deck at the higher level? Would removing the incentives for things that expert pilots can do safely but less qualified pilots cannot do reduce the reward for such excellence and result in compressing the skills--and points--of the pilots in a contest?

And could there be unintended consequences? I know my attention is more focused on my glide computer and altimeter when I am approaching the finish cylinder to make sure I don't bust the hard deck there...and that's when all I have to do is push over more or less to make the numbers come out. I watched several of the world's best pilots bust the hard deck at the finish at the Chile SGP in their eagerness to win the race. Was that a conscious decision knowing what the penalties were, or did they just take their eyes off the ball momentarily?

As I'm struggling to stay above the floor in a marginal thermal, do I want to have to watch the ####ing altitude readout closely not just to insure I'm hanging on but that I'm not sinking through the floor? If the thermal is choppy and I'm marginal, will I be tempted to pull back slightly to maintain my altitude, thereby eroding my safety margin? Will I be forced to ignore a hawk going up fast a half mile away knowing I'm likely to drop through the hard desk on the way there?

Will we be discouraged from flying over low hills and ridge lines seeking thermals when low because although they are far more likely sources, the hard deck makes them unusable?

And since we're trying to address human frailties here, what about the subtle message that it's safe to circle just above the hard deck? I don't know about the rest of you but my decisions to keep thermaling at 500' are very, very few and far between. I don't have a single criterion for that decision; it's contextual and depends on altitude, turbulence, wind, landing options, terrain, time of day, my physical and mental condition, my standing at the time and what kind of contest it is, etc. Some pilots may subconsciously be LESS likely to worry about the risks of low thermaling so long as they remain above the hard deck...because it's within the rules. The human mind behaves in odd ways.

I agree with John that technically a hard deck could be implemented, albeit imperfectly, in the flatlands. I just don't agree (at least now) that we should do it.

But it's a thoughtful discussion. We should probably retitle this and move it to another thread, however.

Chip Bearden