US SSA Contest Pilot Opinion Poll

On Sep 22, 11:21*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
Hmm, is this an unintended side-effect of an earlier rule change to
give long landouts more points (from 400 to 600 IIRC)? *Before that
change, scores for finishers were spread over 600 pts. *The larger
spread meant that a 'short finisher' was more heavily punished,
relative to the day winner.

If the two rule changes are viewed together, they represent a very
significant change away from the philosophy that it is more important
to finish than it is to rack up distance.

I'm not sure that's all bad, but it is a significant change

TA

A little bit, but really it is more an unintended effect of applying
assigned task rules to MAT and TAT. In an assigned task, if you
"finish" you made it all the way around the course, so it makes sense
to give everyone who does that the same distance points. In the TAT
and MAT, there is the option to "finish" by flying 61 miles, when
everybody else goes 250. On an assigned task, this would be counted as
"landing at an airport near the first turn" and get very few points.
On TAT and MAT, you get to call that a "finish" and get the same
distance points as everyone else who went 250 miles. Whether that's
400 or 600 points is a bit of a difference, but minor. We would still
be giving everyone who went from 60 to *249 miles the same distance
points.

So it's really about what do we think of as "finishing the task" when
everybody goes different distances.

John Cochrane

Hmm, good point about the meaning of 'finisher'. I can see this
change also increasing the motivation to avoid coming home early, even
at the cost of a significantly higher chance of landing out.

Right now, coming home early is much more preferable to landing out,
so the decision to turn back in the face of deteriorating weather is
usually a no-brainer. However, if turning back and taking a
significantly under-time finish is going to put your score among the
landouts anyway, why not continue and see what happens - maybe I'll
make it through that man-eating thunderstorm over unlandable terrain
after all? ;-).

Do we, as an organization, really want to be biasing the 'Sporting
Risk' equation in that direction?

TA