TAT scoring question

Let me see
if I got this straight, Mark. You are advocating an
early finish followed by an attempt to better your
speed and if that fails, you plan to beat it back home
so as to make the flight documentation time, in order
to claim your short task speed? Do I have that right,
Mark?

If I were the CD, I would land you at your engine start
point (for distance points only) and probably give
you an un-sportsman-like penalty for trying to manipulate
the rules.

I will add your example to a growing list of motor
glider abuses that I hope will lead to some constraints
being placed on motor gliders when they are allowed
to compete with pure sailplanes.
JJ Sinclair


At 20:30
29 August 2004, Mark Zivley wrote:

For the case of adding a turnpoint, if you're a motorglider
(which we
were) you COULD get back to the finish airport after
cranking out the
motor, land, and get your landing info in w/o too much
trouble as long
as you were less than say 40 miles away from the finish
airport.

John,

Hold on a second here and please don't get too carried away.

1. Everyone at the contest was a motorglider so there was no unfair
advantage to having a motor in this particular case.

2. From the word go, I'm not looking for a score change, just some
clarification on the rules. As I mentioned, even if there was a score
change it would have had no impact on the day or the total.

3. It was quite possible for us to have avoided the 2 mile radius
finish circle at the time we were "surviving" as it looked like the day
was going to re-cycle. If we had not touched the finish circle then
there should have been no question that we could have gone back to turn
area 2 with the additional altitude that we had earned and generated a
point that was deeper into turn 2 that would have given us more credit
for distance and therefore speed.

4. Let's not get too carried away w/ "unsportsmanlike" conduct. I
simply have pointed out an example that did really occur. It's not
unsportsmanlike to go to the finish point and use it as a turn point and
then head back out in the hopes that you can tack on one more turnpoint.
If you make it to an additional turn point and come back to the
finish point you have the option (motorglider or not) to decide at the
time that you fill in your landing card as to whether you claim the
additional turn point or not. True?

Remember, I'm not ranting and raving here, just pointing out what
happened so it can be clarified (hopefully) as we go forward.

Mark