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Old May 15th 18, 09:01 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Andy Blackburn[_3_]
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Default Reducing collision hazard at contests

Duh - skipped right over the horizontal/vertical bit.

I thought about it a bit more.

I could imagine a tactic emerging where teammates further down the scoresheet would hug the closest competitor to their leading teammate to penalize him/her out of contention in the last day or two of a competition. You'd need additional rules to try to judge who's "fault" each penalty is. That might be possible - for instance, penalizing "new" entrants to a thermal. But that might lead to crazy dives to get to the next thermal ahead of the nest competitor(s) and establish a primary position.

Also imagine a couple of gliders in a thermal at the same altitude cracking their airbrakes to block the way of gliders below to let a teammate above get ahead of the group. Yes, it's not very sporting, but certainly unsportsmanlike tactics have been tried. Might need some rules for that to...or maybe people wouldn't try it.

You also wouldn't want people performing crazy maneuvers to clear a conflict without being forced to leave the thermal entirely - zooms, dives, trying to carve across the middle of the thermal to get to the opposite side.

Lastly, people might quibble about not being able to judge these distances very accurately in circumstances where being able to just squeeze in might be important. Would flight computers tell you when you are being penalized? Which flight computers? Software is tough to mandate.

Just noodling.

Andy


On Monday, May 14, 2018 at 6:32:52 PM UTC-5, Steve Koerner wrote:
Andy: Look again at my third paragraph. I did suggest that vertical separation would be different from horizontal. Regardless, I'm not right now picking parameters for this. I just threw out some numbers to make the idea understandable.