On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 3:23:24 PM UTC-7, Sierra Whiskey wrote:
But the option DOES come in to play. If the motor glider is successful in hooking that thermal in non-landable terrain, the record is claimed. In general records are not claimed if the glider got low, and no records are claimed where the engine was required to start on course. The concept of there being recordable data of the unsuccessful attempts is just not valid.

I am NOT saying that one group is inferior to another, which is why I said the logic stands that if we are going to collapse the record list we should get rid of these classes too because there is no measurable difference between a male, female, or junior pilot in terms of capability, performance, or handicap. But we choose to keep these records as they are instead of taking away opportunities to set a diverse variety of records.

Other sports do have age group records such as weightlifting. I would not expect an 80+ year old weightlifter to compete for records against the 22 year old Olympic Record holder. But maybe there is no measurable difference for that to matter either since the older lifter has had longer to train or some other obscure logic that one comes up with.

We can try to rationalize some outlandish equivalency between motor gliders and real gliders, or we can just agree that the system should be (have been) left alone with separate classes for the two. Motor gliders deserve to hold records too, but in their own class. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The system wasn't broken until they went and added this ridiculous modification.

snip If the motor glider is successful in hooking that thermal in non-landable terrain, the record is claimed./snip Show me a single instance in a national record. Furthermore, look at the traces of all the non claimed record attempts flown the same year. They are all posted for you to see. Show me the low saves over unlandable terrain. You claim this is rampant, yet cannot provide a single example, even though all of these flight logs are available to anyone in seconds. Your claims are simply false, without merit, unsupported by evidence of any kind. Are they based on "alternative facts"? You allege thoughts, motives, and actions to record holding motorglider pilots without either knowledge or experience. That is deplorable. I do not doubt that there are motorglider pilots who engage in engine start low saves over unlandable terrain - its a big world with a lot of different people in it. These pilots are not record setting pilots though.

I encourage everyone to look for themselves. Sign into OLC, pick a record holding pilot like Mitch Polinsky or Jim Payne, pick a year that the record was claimed. In the flight book, scroll down the flights that month. Hover the cursor over each flight and you will see the altitude trace including ground clearance. Engine runs are shown in yellow and subsequent trace in grey. This will take you 5 minutes time. Record attempts are not made out here on weak days. The working band on the strong days is generally 13,000 - 18,000 feet, over terrain that is roughly 5000 ft. At 50:1 you have 75 miles glide once you get "low". For all of 2016 (in which many records were set) Mitch Polinsky's log files shows 1 inflight engine start (directly over Ely airport on 7/15) for the entire year. In 2014 (another record year) I count 5 engine starts in 34 flights, 4 in the immediate vicinity of airports, one within glide of an airstrip. All of the potential landing sites air and car retrievable. In 2015, 3 times, all in the immediate vicinity of airports/airstrips.

In the Great Basin, where almost all of the currently held records where flown, there are very, very few "suitable landing sites" that are not airports or airstrips. What looks like flat desert is rock strewn, sagebrush covered, glider breaking rough and tumble desert range. What looks like a dry lake is an alkali swamp. This isn't Kansas, there aren't any plowed corn fields.

I get it. You don't like motorgliders, they offend your sense of what a "pure" or "real" glider is (your terms). That is a personal belief that you hold, not shared by a lot of the world. But pretending that they have an advantage during the performance of a record attempt is provably without merit. During any of those record attempts listed above, you could have flown right alongside in a V2c or 29, with exactly the same options and safety (and a little more performance, too).