US SSA Contest Pilot Opinion Poll

On Sep 23, 7:26*am, Frank wrote:

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

TA

Exactly my concern with this rule, too.

I understand your arguments, John; they make a fair amount of
sense... I don't want to reward someone who "took it easy" because
their glider has long legs. But a big part of me also thinks its just
weird to reward someone who didn't make it around the course! Even
though ATs, TATs, and MATs are all very different, they start with the
core idea that you have a start, some waypoints, and a finish. And
the overriding theme is to make it around the course and to the
finish. Screwing up that fundamental "getting to the finish" part can
be interpreted as a bad performance and/or bad decision-making. I
don't want to reward that, simply because the pilot has big cojones
and is willing to fly into a bad situation on the gamble that he or
she will rack up more distance points than others before hitting the
dirt. And when does one "flip the switch" mentally, to go for that
instead of speed points? Would it be on the worst of days, when
everyone's cutting the task really short (isn't this when we usually
see MATs called most-often, too)? That's when we want to encourage
people to strike out on their own? hrrm...

Also: What other sport defines a course and a finish, but gives some
people more credit if they DON'T cross the finish-line?

Like I said befo It seems to me that we're turning the system on
its ear. We're moving away from "the course" as the underlying
foundation, and moving towards "speed and distance are more important
than the course"; which is a big shift IMHO.

I'm not vehemently opposed to this, but I still am not comfortable
with it. In some ways, it seems like a fix primarily for the Sports
Class, since the "1-26 vs Nimbus4" argument only applies there.
Performance levels are so much closer in the FAI classes, you're
"fixing" anything (no one can use min-distance to gain a big advantage
over others). In the FAI classes, the way I see it, you're flat-out
shifting the focus of the TAT & MAT away from "fly the course and
return at minimum time, go for max speed". You're moving the focus
towards "make nominal (or greater) distance in a reasonable time
without sacrificing much speed and if it starts to go bad screw
getting home and make max distance you can".

I see the "problem" with the current system; but if you view
competition tasks through the lens of "complete the course, first and
foremost" then its only a problem for the Sports Class with its wide
performance-level variance. For the other classes its more about how
you want to view tasks and what should be the _most-important_
criteria for judging someone's performance. Is it speed around the
course and across the finish line? Or is it distance?

--Noel
P.S. BTW, since other threads on RAS are talking about the Worlds -
just out of curiosity do any other countries (or the IGC) have scoring
rules like this, wherein non-finishers can score higher than
finishers?