USA and FAI rules

A few points, as someone who's just come into glider racing in the
last 5 years:

1) I've studied US and IGC/FAI rules and I think that in many ways the
USA rules are far superior. Because we haven't tried to get multiple
nations to agree to our rules-set, we've been able to adapt and evolve
our rules more readily over the years and I think it has bred a better
system. Our finishes are safer, our tasks often leave less to dumb
luck (more on that in a minute) and scoring quirks, etc. I don't love
every rule in the book and I think that some of our procedures
definitely DO work against us when pilots have to change gears and
adapt to IGC/FAI rules for international contests.

BUT, as John points out, a very few pilots ever go to the Worlds and
the idea of throwing out our rules-set so that a few of the top pilots
get better practice at local events before heading off to the worlds
seems backwards and elitist. The SSA is a national organization that
is supposedly targeting _all_ soaring participants, not just a select
few. Therefore, our rules should support broad and fair competition
that works well and is compatible with our FAA rules, our airspace,
our liability laws (i.e. landouts, distance-days, low finishes,
accidents, etc). That may put us at a disadvantage in world
competitions, but I fail to see how our standing at World
Championships is anything but a vanity issue. Sure finishing on top
*might* have some PR and recruiting advantages for growing the sport;
but there are far more things we can do at the local and regional (and
national) level to grow the sport, than to hope for some "Olympic
moment" to get US culture to change and suddenly value soaring. I
mean, when's the last time you heard a bunch of people say they were
going to take up skiing simply because they heard about an American
winning the FAI Apline or Super-G championships? AND, I might add,
the sport of skiing does just fine in the USA despite a lot of
Europeans winning the top prizes year after year.

2) As for the comment from some people that "we need to call ATs". I
couldn't disagree with you more. While AATs and MATs can be poorly
called (and those are a CD issue, not a rules issue), the AT is a
fundamentally flawed metric for testing pilot skill. That 1 mile
cylinder forces pilots to all fly virtually the same route between
waypoints. You might think that forcing pilots to fly similar courses
is a good thing, but that TOTALLY ignores the fact that the atmosphere
is changing all the time. Just because they fly over the same points
on the ground does _NOT_ mean they fly through the same AIR. And
while you can do _some_ planning ahead when you choose to start on-
course, you simply cannot forecast what the air will be doing over a
particular point on the ground 1-2 hours down the course ahead of
you. This means that pilots who fly along the course legs and
encounter more rising air than their opponents have a HUGE advantage
over the pilots who don't hit that rising air. An AT constrains the
less-lucky pilots and gives them far fewer options, because your
course is essentially fixed and ANY course deviation adds distance and
time. If I go through the start gate 5 minutes after my opponent, but
I hit 2 less thermals on-course as a result is it really a fair judge
of pilot skill if he then wins and I lose? Sure, he exhibited some
skill in picking the exact right time to leave the start gate; but did
he (or she) actually _predict_ that they'd find that extra thermal or
two 100 miles down-course if they left the start-gate at that exact
moment? Is that really a predictable and repeatable skill we should
be evaluating pilots on?

With a reasonable AAT or TAT, you can still make an equal _distance_
by flying a different course-line. So deviating to hit rising air (or
escape sinking air) is not an immediate penalty. The upshot of this
is that an AAT/TAT with reasonably-sized turn cylinders evens out the
luck-factor and gives pilots who start at slightly different times a
chance at encountering the same number of thermals throughout their
entire flight. Compared to an AT, you're dampening the luck-factor in
finding thermals directly on-course. This allows two other skills to
have a larger impact on a pilot's contest performance: Their ability
to find lift (and deviate to it when worthwhile), and their ability to
work lift (or overall glide efficiency) better than their opponents.

So you tell me: What do YOU think is the important factor in
determining the "best" glider pilot out there - their ability to leave
the Start Gate at a precise time and find lift directly on-course? Or
their ability to read the sky while on-course, deviate to lift, and
work it optimally?

Just like Baseball statistics are evolving and the rise of
sabermetrics has allowed us to more accurately measure game-state and
find true player skill, so too can evolutions in contest tasking.

--Noel