Tales Of The Bloody Triangle

On Thursday, February 11, 2021 at 5:32:35 PM UTC-5, Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote on 2/11/2021 12:56 PM:

This is what really ticks me off even a bit more than the" Apology", Turnpoint circles, at this age am having difficulty seeing where a turnpoint circle is any benefit to a triangular objective. What ever happened to the day when we took our 120 film and waited until the next day for the director to tell you that you did not make the turn. Liberalism has invaded the glider world, now you do not have to reach the turnpoint but just get close, hey, what are they doing, pitching hand grenades, only close counts. Hey, bring back the good ole days, start gate, turnpoint verification and the best guy wins. At this time I must say congratulations to GB for a nice triangle out of the Seminole Lake Motor Glider facility. Finally I see a triangle out of that place. I am so glad that I am having a positive influence on those guys. Bob

They used turnpoints you had to go to because they had no way of determining where you went
otherwise. They used to have observers at the turnpoints! And even when they began using
cameras, they had to have a point they could recognize on the film. They didn't choose that
turnpoint system because they liked it so much, or because it was "pure", but because they
could make it work. GPS changed what we could make work. Shoot, in the really old days - no
turnpoints! You just flew as far as you could.

You prefer the old system, but the new system has advantages, so that's what we use now. I
liked contest flying better when we had mostly assigned tasks, and we had to go to an actual
point, but that system had it's problems, and I can see changing it.
--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

The advantage of the Turn Area Tasks (also called Assigned Area Tasks) is that you can have a handicapped competition (Sports Class) where everybody flies the same (minimum) length of time but the higher performance gliders need to fly a longer distance. That was not possible to arrange before GPS flight logs. Some people don't like TATs or even handicapped competitions at all, so be it. On the other hand many people who want to fly in contests don't want to also have to compete with the purchasing power of richer pilots. Handicaps allow gliders of very different performance and price points to all have fun together. Given the declining number of people flying in contests, anything that attracts more of them is good for everybody.