500 foot rule and pilot opinion poll

Cliff Hilty wrote:

Exactly my point, Pilot E makes a decision to go straight
in and land. Excepting the fact that he will lose points
to the slowest finisher but also not pushing a bad
situation. and landing at a good airfeild. I would
reward this not penalize it! Pilot D instead is hoping
for a break in the storm and risks losing points to
pilot E with the hope of a payoff by making it home
and pushing pilot E's score down. Seems to me that
its a competetive pilots decision to make.

Wow! I am absolutely astounded that you could conclude that pilot E
deserves more points than pilot D in the scenario that I presented in my
previous post. Is there anyone else out there in RAS-land that agrees
with Cliff?

I just don't see
the need to have a single landout eliminate you from
having a chance to win a contest!

You obviously think that it is unfair for the landout to be penalized so
severely, but have you considered that reducing or eliminating the
landout penalty might be unfair to the pilots who do whatever it takes
to finish the task? And doing "whatever it takes" usually does not mean
risk-taking, but the antithesis of risk-taking: get high stay high, go
around the blue hole, take a few extra turns in the last thermal, keep a
large altitude margin throughout the final glide, etc.

How many contests
have you been to that after the first or second day
a few competitors have dropped out because of landouts
and knowing that they will not have a chance to place
even in the top three?

I don't think that's any reason to change the scoring system; I'd say
those competitors need to change their attitudes. They are obviously
placing too much importance on the ego-trip of winning, and not placing
enough importance on taking advantage of a golden opportunity to improve
and refine their cross-country soaring skills.

When a pilot falls out of contention early in a contest, that's a great
time for him to start experimenting with changes in his racing strategy,
such as reducing his aggressiveness in the selection of thermals, or
increasing his aggressiveness in making off-course excursions to seek
out the best lift. A pilot who is leading or in contention cannot afford
to indulge in such experimentation; he should be conservative and keep
on doing whatever he's been doing.

Gary Ittner P7
"Have glider, will race"