Minutes of Fall 2014 USA Rules Committee meeting posted on SSA website

We've talked about this format, and the Houston club has experimented with it and found they like it.

In the US we frequently use turn area tasks and MAT (modified assigned) tasks. A popular form of the latter is the "long MAT" where everyone goes to the same turnpoints but the lower performance gliders can turn for home sooner.

These aren't exactly the same, I know. The handicap distance task removes the strategic question of how far to go into turn areas, and the strategic flexibility of going a bit more into one and a bit less into the other. But overall, like turn areas, you're going in roughly the same directions and the lower performance can turn around sooner. In the "long MAT" the high performance guys can't get behind the low performance gaggle on every turnpoint.

Still, we have two task types that accommodate racing between gliders of dissimilar performance. We have a lot of confusion by pilots on how these two work, and a strong demand from pilots to keep rules simple. So for the moment the US is "watch and wait" on this task type.

If a contest wants to try it by waiver that would be great.

John Cochrane BB