Handicap Distance Tasks

On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 11:48:49 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:

To a couple of your points:

This kind of contest has worked well out of Truckee, which is not flat terrain or homogenous conditions. Certainly it would be possible to intentionally call a task more favorable to one end or the other of the handicap, just as it is possible to avoid doing so.

The high performance gliders do not have to go to an exact point - it depends on how the scratch glider is defined. The highest performing glider in the competition typically still has a cylinder, which can be made as large as is thought fair, so they do get to chose a favorable turn location within limits (that are a little narrower than the low performance gliders).

Many of the same considerations apply to an AAT, in that the high performance gliders MUST go further into the cylinder or risk not making minimum times, even if conditions at the far edge are not favorable.

In perfectly flown tasks, the low performance gliders are markers exactly half the time, and the high performance gliders makers the other half.

In any handicapping scheme, there is unfairness due to conditions. Any contest type rewards certain tactical skills more than others.

Since you seem to understand this task, can you explain to me what problem we have with the current tasks used in the US that this task solves?
Another way- what benefit does it provide over existing tasks?
Thanks
UH