Contest Class Development for Future Success - The Case fordeveloping the Handicapped Classes

Glad to have a junior voice chime in.

There is a proposal the RC is working to eliminate all the graduated penalties, devaluation formulas, motorglider accommodations, etc. many of those were added over the years to address real or perceived fairness issues. A clean slate is one thing worth considering - though personally I think rules complexity is a bit of a red herring. The real issue is cost and time.

How is a time-limited OLC race with a start gate different from a no-turn MAT? Maybe freeing people up from the need to go to turnpoints helps? I find the OLC leg valuation rules to be unnecessarily Byzantine. Why not make every leg equal value and have no limit on the number of legs? Daniel made mincemeat out of the field on a MAT day at Montague by turning it into a lap race using basically one thermal all day long - pretty cool.

On consequence of simplification is more instances of what happened at Moriarty this year where one bold pilot essentially won the contest on the first day by making distance on a day that no one else did. That was under the current rules that have all the complexities of number of competitors devaluation, etc. Are people okay with that?