US SSA Contest Pilot Opinion Poll

On Sep 24, 7:34*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
On Sep 23, 6:48*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:



On 9/23/2010 9:29 AM, noel.wade wrote:

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?

In the olden days, when we had waypoints that were actually points, we
had a well defined course, and it was reasonable to talk about
completing it. Now we no longer have points, but huge areas, and you can
draw millions of courses, so maybe we should drop the idea of "the
course" and just talk about the Task. That's what people are trying to
complete - "the course" no longer exists, as each pilot picks his own
course.

And while that is the backbone of the Sports Class, it is also the
reason I had little interest in it, and eventually stopped racing as the
other classes flew fewer and fewer assigned speed tasks. But I digress....

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarmhttp://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

My view is quite similar to Eric's. Back in the AST days, there was a
"course" and if you made it home you "finished". I'm not so sure that
doing 61 miles and beetling home on a 270 mile day qualifies in the
same way. It's as if we let people turn around at the first turn and
get a "finish" anyway. That is the central philosophical issue.

It does happen in TATs, and in FAI classes too. The examples on the
poll question were from FAI classes. Newcastle day 2 just had a TAT
with possible distances from 66 o 245 miles, in view of very uncertain
weather.

I'm as concerned about safety and incentives not to push on in bad
weather as the next guy, and I'm usually on the other end of those
discussions. However, we have an airport bonus for that. It's not
obvious to me that we should give 600 points for landing at one
particular airport and 25 points for landing at another one. If one
sees a problem in people pushing on in bad weather, raising the
airport bonus is a more sensible step.

Part of my preference is because the change *removes and awful roll-
the-dice decision, stop in an hour for a "finish" or push on for speed
points. I hate big roll of the dice decisions. In the AST, on which
the scoring equation was based, there was no such decision, you just
keep plugging along as long as you can. The proposed new system
removes a lot of that agonizing. It's especially bad in the TAT
because you have to commit early if you want to use the option to nick
the cylinders and finish in one hour. I also dislike MATs where the
right strategy is always to buzz around in gliding distance of the
home airport so you make sure to get those "finisher" points. I didn't
take two weeks off of work and drive a thousand miles for that. Stay
safe, yes. Stay near airports, sure. But not necessarily right near
the home airport.

John Cochrane

Please adopt the FAI rules and stop wasting everyone's time with
inventing new ones! Use any surplus energy to participate in
refining the FAI rules if changes are needed.

Andy