Well Marc, you, at least, win points for a well-reasoned response. I
appreciate it. And we'll continue to disagree I suspect... The most
important unanswered question in my book is the huge discrepency in
speed we see at the cylinder wall and not at the finish line. One
advantage of having been at this a few years is I recognize how much
this smacks of the old start gate and the very real dangers is
presented. I've seen far more close calls and accidents in the start
gate than at the finish line, the result of the large differences in
speeds among starters all trying to cross a line at or just below 5,000
feet agl. Go back and look at my model of the finish cylinder.

http://users.adelphia.net/~cocallag

Traffic is all arriving in a shallow arc at about the same altitude
with as much as a 100 knot delta in speeds. Even more if gliders stop
to thermal near the cylinder. This simply does not happen at the finish
line.