WWGC.

As a rule, competition pilots do not cheat, and do not like cheaters. Some rules maybe difficult to police, but even the existence of them strongly discourages cheating. If we make only rules we can police with 100% certainty all the time, we are left with very little. The wwgc penalty send the exact message IGC discussed in previous plenary, ground controlling is not what we want in this sport. I seriously doubt any team will risk chance of penalty in future competitions.

I agree with krasw but additionally I think that the penalty for a team organization knowingly cheating should be expulsion and disqualification of the entire team from the contest. Such a measure would ensure a high level of compliance with rules that might not be 100% enforceable by technical means alone.

On Monday, 20 January 2020 12:51:13 UTC+2, wrote:
I agree with krasw but additionally I think that the penalty for a team organization knowingly cheating should be expulsion and disqualification of the entire team from the contest. Such a measure would ensure a high level of compliance with rules that might not be 100% enforceable by technical means alone.

Giving penalty that drops pilot from medals is quite serious in my opinion. If whole team would have been disqualified, would that help this sport, or perhaps do harm instead? I'm sure organizers had this whole spectrum of penalties to consider (from no penalty to disqualification) and they did their best in extremely difficult situation.

On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 2:57:06 PM UTC, krasw wrote:
On Monday, 20 January 2020 12:51:13 UTC+2, wrote:
I agree with krasw but additionally I think that the penalty for a team organization knowingly cheating should be expulsion and disqualification of the entire team from the contest. Such a measure would ensure a high level of compliance with rules that might not be 100% enforceable by technical means alone.

Giving penalty that drops pilot from medals is quite serious in my opinion. If whole team would have been disqualified, would that help this sport, or perhaps do harm instead? I'm sure organizers had this whole spectrum of penalties to consider (from no penalty to disqualification) and they did their best in extremely difficult situation.

It hasn't harmed athletics to ban individuals who cheat (and Russia as a whole) for long periods

On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 2:24:49 AM UTC-5, krasw wrote:
As a rule, competition pilots do not cheat, and do not like cheaters.

Yeah, well... some of our friends need a little more "help" following the rules than others.

I speculate, based on flight logs, that someone at WWGC hoped that they could skate on a pre-start airspace violation by pulling the brakes at 7500', landing, re-launching, then turning in a flight log containing only the second flight of the day. Is this cheating?

The claim of the Australian team (I am told) is that the tracking info they used was on a publicly accessible, unsecured web site and therefore available to all. Apparently, the claim wasn't completely persuasive...

Here's wishing the IGC good ideas informed by good insight. They have some difficult problems to grapple with.

T8

On Monday, 20 January 2020 19:38:52 UTC+2, Tango Eight wrote:
I speculate, based on flight logs, that someone at WWGC hoped that they could skate on a pre-start airspace violation by pulling the brakes at 7500', landing, re-launching, then turning in a flight log containing only the second flight of the day. Is this cheating?


There is pretty clear rules for providing flight logs of all the flights of the day. Not doing that will pretty invalidate your day on the spot. If we speculate that this happened, it is worst cheating attempt I've heard of.