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#21
August 31st 04, 09:48 PM
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#22
September 1st 04, 02:47 AM
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#24
September 1st 04, 03:03 PM
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#25
September 2nd 04, 09:29 AM
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Jonathan Gere wrote:
It did not count for a finish, because you didn't announce it on the radio. If you did call a finish, you are done after one lap and can't go on later. I'm not speaking of what WinScore will say, only of what the rules require. No, this is what the rules requi 11.2.2.4.4 If all claimed turnpoints are valid, and the pilot obtained a scored start time, a finish time prior to finish closing and landed at the contest site, then the pilot has completed the task. Please notice that this rule does NOT contain the phrase "and announced his start and finish on the radio". It is unambiguous that S's and F's "shall" be announced on the radio. No, it is unambiguous that start *times* shall be reported within 15 minutes of a start, and it does not have to be on the radio (see rule 10.8.8.3). Finishes are announced by the pilot only when a finish cylinder is used. With a finish line, the pilot only announces his approach: "(Contest ID) four miles". Maybe it can be a finish, but you take a penalty for not announcing. Now you are getting closer. It *is* a valid finish, and *maybe* you will get a penalty for not announcing it on the radio. If a pilot repeatedly refused to follow the radio procedures defined in the rules, the Contest Director could make a good case for awarding a penalty for unsafe flying or unsportsmanlike conduct. But I would have a low opinion of any CD that handed out such a penalty automatically on first offense without considering the circumstances. On day 7 of the 2002 USA 15m Nats at Tonopah, Bill Bartell experienced a double battery failure while on task: his primary battery became unplugged, and his backup battery had a low charge. He turned off his radio, his only vario, and his flight computer, saving his few remaining electrons for the flight recorder. Bill finished and landed silently, winning the day and moving into first place overall. Would you have given him distance points only, or a penalty for not calling "four miles"? One day at the 2001 USA 15m Nats at Uvalde, the finish was so crowded that the radio was squealing constantly from multiple pilots stepping on each other trying to call "four miles", and Charlie Lite trying to acknowledge each call. During the less than 2 minutes it took me to fly at redline from "four miles out" to the finish line, there was not one moment of clear frequency in which to announce my approach, and I chose not to step on some other pilot's announcement. Would you have given me a penalty? Suppose S(tart)=F(inish)=TP C. No designated turn MAT. You fly S-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-F (i.e. 11 TPs - 4 times around a triangle) then after landing claim the best scoring of any one of 10 combinations of consecutive laps: 1,1+2,1+2+3,1+2+3+4,2,2+3,2+3+4,3,3+4,or 4. Will this work? Can you openly announce all 4 S's and all 4 F's on the radio to avoid the penalties for not doing so, and choose which to discard by leaving them off your landing card? There is nothing in the rules to prevent this scheme, but practical considerations make it a useless strategy. Firstly, any of the lap combinations that took significantly less than the minimum task time would likely score very low. And since maximum start altitude and minimum finish altitude are never the same, in order to make an efficient finish and an efficient start between each lap, you would have to finish at minimum finish altitude and immediately pull up into a good thermal, climbing to maximum start altitude before exiting the start cylinder, all without wasting time searching for lift. It is therefore unlikely that any combination of laps other than 1+2+3+4 would have both an efficient start and an efficient finish. And if any number of laps less than four is sufficient to use up the minimum task time, you will be beaten by the pilot who did a better job of "bracketing" the day by not flying as far as your four laps. If so, why do so many pilots go undertime on no turn MAT's, when they could easily bank insurance laps during the start gate roulette? Perhaps those pilots are not as adept as you are at mis-interpreting the rules or devising poor racing strategies. Gary Ittner P7 "Have glider, will race"
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#26
September 3rd 04, 01:02 PM
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Gary Ittner wrote in message ...
Jonathan Gere wrote: Please notice that this rule does NOT contain the phrase "and announced his start and finish on the radio". Is this a good argument?. I would guess there are quite a few important rules that affect getting a speed score which are NOT referenced in 11.2.2.4.4 or the narrow hierarchy of rules defining the terms 11.2.2.4.4 references. If not, and 11.2.2.4.4 is the all important master root of all rules that count, congratulations, but why is it buried 5 levels deep in section 11? I am not in favor of radio procedure penalties or radio procedure violations invalidating "normal" starts or finishes. I am only clutching at straws to see how the rules might prohibit pre-pending or appending TPs between multiple provisional starts and finishes. I find the ability to be on multiple provisional starts / finishes / tasks simultaneously an absurd consequence of the rules. It is little comfort to me to have your assurance that it is strategically useless. On day 7 of the 2002 USA 15m Nats at Tonopah, Bill Bartell experienced a double battery failure while on task: his primary battery became unplugged, and his backup battery had a low charge. He turned off his radio, his only vario, and his flight computer, saving his few remaining electrons for the flight recorder. Bill finished and landed silently, winning the day and moving into first place overall. Would you have given him distance points only, or a penalty for not calling "four miles"? One day at the 2001 USA 15m Nats at Uvalde, the finish was so crowded that the radio was squealing constantly from multiple pilots stepping on each other trying to call "four miles", and Charlie Lite trying to acknowledge each call. During the less than 2 minutes it took me to fly at redline from "four miles out" to the finish line, there was not one moment of clear frequency in which to announce my approach, and I chose not to step on some other pilot's announcement. Would you have given me a penalty? Good arguments for CD discretion. Suppose S(tart)=F(inish)=TP C. No designated turn MAT. You fly S-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-(FSC)-A-B-F (i.e. 11 TPs - 4 times around a triangle) then after landing claim the best scoring of any one of 10 combinations of consecutive laps: 1,1+2,1+2+3,1+2+3+4,2,2+3,2+3+4,3,3+4,or 4. Will this work? Can you openly announce all 4 S's and all 4 F's on the radio to avoid the penalties for not doing so, and choose which to discard by leaving them off your landing card? There is nothing in the rules to prevent this scheme, but practical considerations make it a useless strategy. Firstly, any of the lap combinations that took significantly less than the minimum task time would likely score very low. I'm shocked. This is weird. I don't believe that all variations of this loophole are strategically useless. The 4 times around example is just a good example of the absurdity of the loophole. Operational exploitations can be much more profitable. And since maximum start altitude and minimum finish altitude are never the same, in order to make an efficient finish and an efficient start between each lap, you would have to finish at minimum finish altitude and immediately pull up into a good thermal, climbing to maximum start altitude before exiting the start cylinder, all without wasting time searching for lift. It is therefore unlikely that any combination of laps other than 1+2+3+4 would have both an efficient start and an efficient finish. In practice, one could just prepend optionally claimable S-one or more TPs- Home TP-S combinations without going low to finish. Cheap insurance against gross or possibly even minor undertime. And if any number of laps less than four is sufficient to use up the minimum task time, you will be beaten by the pilot who did a better job of "bracketing" the day by not flying as far as your four laps. The insurance excursions would occur before the final start intended to bracket the *expected* day. The insurance excursions would absorb any inefficiency in getting ready for the "perfect" optimized start. If not claimed, the excursions imperfect efficiency wouldn't matter. On the other hand, 1hr at even 80% efficiency is a lot better than nothing, when everyone else finished an hour undertime due to an *unexpected* thunderstorm. 30 minutes at 90% efficiency might be worth claiming to avoid a routine 5-10 minute undertime (at 0% efficiency). If so, why do so many pilots go undertime on no turn MAT's, when they could easily bank insurance laps during the start gate roulette? Perhaps those pilots are not as adept as you are at mis-interpreting the rules or devising poor racing strategies. Thanks. You admit the loophole. I leave it to better pilots to work out the operationally sound strategies. Gary Ittner P7 "Have glider, will race"
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#27
September 3rd 04, 05:12 PM
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11.2.2.1
Quote A11.2.2.1 ... The landing card must reflect the flight actually accomplished, even in the case where claiming a shorter flight might be in the pilot's best interest. A deliberate violation of this rule could be considered unsportsmanlike conduct. Unquote If the intent here is only to preclude deliberately helping to cancel or devalue the day, then this certainly should not apply to not claiming TP's along the way which would invalidate the pilot's flight. Examples might be exceeding 11 TP's, as you mention, or a TP which winds up being a repeated TP. To claim the invalid TP's would be to claim a "shorter" flight in the scoring sense anyway. The issue I see is that in quaint olden days the starts and finishes were fixed and known to the ground, so the pilot's longest (in distance) task was his fastest task. The pilot would never be contributing to devaluation or cancellation by reporting the subset of his flight giving the best scoring speed. Also, a pilot could not discard a later start and revert to a previous start and use some TP's made before and some TP's made after the final start to get a better distance. But now: What if his best attempt in one flight is complete, but grossly undertime? This could cause devaluation under Rule 11.5.4. Must he claim the maximum possible distance and/or time from the combination of turnpoints reached in two attempts he never intended as a single task attempt, even if it produces a slower scoring speed? An unintended valid TP may even have been reached following an unintended valid start with no intention of even being on course, must he claim this under 11.2.2.1? What if a pilot starts, gets a TP, gets slow, comes back without landing, takes another start (an entirely new attempt he thinks) and lands out short of minimum distance. Should he claim the maximum possible distance from the combination of turnpoints reached in two attempts he never intended as a single task attempt? Does good sportsmanship require it? Do the rules require it? Jonathan Gere 34 (Erik mann) wrote in message . com... (John Cochrane) wrote in message . com... However, as far as I can tell, you CAN call your first passage the "finish" for scoring purposes if you're willing to take the land-out risk. For example, if you try another turnpoint in a MAT but then turn around and land home, or even if you make it but it gives you a slower time overall, nothing stops you from calling the first passage a "finish." I agree with John' interpretation, and I think the way you accomplish this is based on the contents of the landing card. Using the MAT example for a second, if we have a task with: Start, Turn 1, Turn 2 assigned and assuming the pilot completes Turns 1 and 2, then the options for the next CLAIMED point a - Finish - Turn 3 If the landing card says the pilot claims Finish (irrespective of whether the trace shows he actually made Turn 3), then the scorer is obligated to score the flight that way. As long as he was within the limits of the Finish Cylinder, I see no reason why that isn't legitimate. If the landing card says the pilot claims Turn 3, then that's how it is scored. It's not unlike the old PST where you might take a picture of a turnpoint as you went by it "just in case". You might opt not to include it if you were going to exceed your 11 turnpoints, for example. HOWEVER, rule 11.2.2.1 says that the landing card shall "accurately reflect the flight that the pilot completed". As I recall, the intent of that rule was to prevent someone from intentionally under-reporting their flight in order to cancel out a day. That's certainly how I would interpret this rule if I were on the Contest Competition Committee (3.1.4). As far as radio usage is concerned, the Appendix to the rules makes it clear that the radio finish calls are for safety or nostalgia only "Pilots and gate personnel should understand that the radio call... is now mostly for show" No? P3
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#28
September 4th 04, 01:25 AM
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Jonathan Gere wrote:
Please notice that this rule does NOT contain the phrase "and announced his start and finish on the radio". Is this a good argument?. It is difficult to prove a negative, isn't it? Perhaps I should not have attempted to make things easier for you and instead simply said, "There is no rule that invalidates a start or a finish due to lack of a radio call", and put the burden of proof on you to support your opposing statement. I would guess there are quite a few important rules that affect getting a speed score which are NOT referenced in 11.2.2.4.4 or the narrow hierarchy of rules defining the terms 11.2.2.4.4 references. If not, and 11.2.2.4.4 is the all important master root of all rules that count, congratulations, but why is it buried 5 levels deep in section 11? All the rules count, but they cannot all be front and center in paragraph one. And while some rules may be more important than others for running a safe and fair contest, the importance of a rule is not intended to be proportional to its subparagraph level in the rule book. I am not in favor of radio procedure penalties or radio procedure violations invalidating "normal" starts or finishes. I am only clutching at straws to see how the rules might prohibit pre-pending or appending TPs between multiple provisional starts and finishes. So, did you deliberately prevaricate when you stated that, according to the rules, a start or finish is invalidated by the lack of a radio announcement? I find the ability to be on multiple provisional starts / finishes / tasks simultaneously an absurd consequence of the rules. And I do not. It is little comfort to me to have your assurance that it is strategically useless. It is of great comfort to me. I believe there may an infinite number of useless strategies for flying any of the tasks. One of the main purposes of the rules is to ensure fair competition, but I see no benefit in making our rulebook infinitely longer by specifically prohibiting every strategy in which a pilot cannot gain an unfair advantage, or indeed any advantage at all. I'm shocked. This is weird. I don't believe that all variations of this loophole are strategically useless. The 4 times around example is just a good example of the absurdity of the loophole. Operational exploitations can be much more profitable. In practice, one could just prepend optionally claimable S-one or more TPs- Home TP-S combinations without going low to finish. Cheap insurance against gross or possibly even minor undertime. The insurance excursions would occur before the final start intended to bracket the *expected* day. The insurance excursions would absorb any inefficiency in getting ready for the "perfect" optimized start. If not claimed, the excursions imperfect efficiency wouldn't matter. On the other hand, 1hr at even 80% efficiency is a lot better than nothing, when everyone else finished an hour undertime due to an *unexpected* thunderstorm. 30 minutes at 90% efficiency might be worth claiming to avoid a routine 5-10 minute undertime (at 0% efficiency). I will admit that it is not entirely impossible that you could gain by this strategy, but the phrase "extremely unlikely" does not seem powerful enough to describe it. To recap, your insurance lap would only be useful with a no turn MAT (rare nowadays), called on a day with no expected weather problems (when other, less flexible tasks are *far* more likely to be called; no turn MATs are usually called specifically because there are expected weather problems), all of your competitors start (what turns out to be) too late, and along comes a weather problem too severe for the flexibility of the MAT to deal with. I'd call it a one in a million chance. And I don't agree that this insurance is cheap; you simply haven't calculated the cost. You might have to try this insurance lap trick many times before the proper conditions arise to make it useful, and: 1. You might land out while your competitors are safely back near the contest site playing start gate roulette. Believe me, I know what it feels like to land out before one's expected start. 2. The conditions could change while you are on your insurance lap, causing everyone else to start en masse before you get back for your expected start. Even on a no turn MAT, there is often only one obvious direction to go. Your competitors will have thermal markers, and you will have none. 3. Even when the proper combination of conditions comes along, you cannot be sure all of your competitors will start late. If one starts early, he will have the advantage over you of being able to place a higher proportion of his flight in the area of best lift. Your insurance lap will necessarily be close to home, and, in my experience, that is rarely where the best soaring conditions are located. The premium you pay for your insurance lap is much higher than the potential claim payout. Thanks. You admit the loophole. I leave it to better pilots to work out the operationally sound strategies. And if there are no operationally sound strategies, is it still a loophole? Gary Ittner P7 "Have glider, will race"
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#29
September 4th 04, 05:04 PM
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As I read the rules I am hard pressed to find any language
that indicates that radio calls are intended to determine which starts or finishes are to be used. There is certainly no specific language requiring this. To the contrary, what language there is appears to indicate safety as the reason, particularly for finishes. Furthermore, the specific language in the 2004 rules makes start calls optional at the CD's discretion. 10.8.8 Start time reporting The CD *may* require pilots to report their start times by radio. When it's mandatory, the rules read *shall* rather than *may*. As to the efficacy Jonathan's 4-lap strategy, I guess it is theoretically possible that you could have a 1.5 hour MAT called (with or without a first TP) on a day with 6 hours of good soaring conditions after the gate opens. Gary points out some of the practical limitations (best conditions near the Start/Finish, outlanding risk, needing to find a good thermal from low altitude right after each intermediate finish). The biggest negative for me is the fact that you would need to take a start earlier than normal to get in the first 'lap' and from then on you are 'on the clock'. This means that you are forced at each subsequent finish to get back out on course right away, rather than trying to optimize the height or location or time of your start. This is particularly true if you need more than one lap to get over minimum time. There is also (as John Cochrane would point out) a structural points penalty associated with multi-lap strategies that put you well over minimum time. A potentially more likely scenario is a pilot who elects to add turnpoints after 'finishing' a task - either because he finds himself under time and/or sees conditions ahead that allow him to quickly bag a couple of additional turnpoints. I pursued this strategy one day at a contest this summer, but never connected with a good thermal, so I landed. I personally don't have a problem with pilots pursuing these strategies - practical or not. It doesn't seem unfair and the rules required to preclude them would just add complexity. 9B
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#30
September 4th 04, 05:54 PM
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This bagging of turnpoints or laps before your start. Remember, the task start
time?? Remember what Winscore checks for?? Whenever you start, no matter when, Winscore MUST see a gps trace to each and every turnpoint or turn area and a finish. IF Winscore does NOT see this trace, then it gives you a landout. On A MAT, Winscore must see this trace between turnpoints claimed or you will get a landout. Winscore checks flight traces and turnpoints/ turn areas. Like it connects the gps fixes to the dots and the circle has to be complete. Without a proper flight trace you will get a landout, or no flight. Just as See you shows you your flight, if you don't get to the turnpoint/turn area it shows you a photo landing. Only a small power interuption is allowed. The finish and start are not turnpoints. If you come back and finish, you better get a turnpoint for the area you are in before you go back and try to increase your distance. and then get a turnpoint on a mat and then landout, since you didn't land at the home field, then Winscore will land you out. What you can not do is bag turnpoints or laps before the start. Winscore again checks for traces between the start and turnpoints and /or turn areas. If someone wishes to finish, then head back to the turn area to get more mileage, he can do so, but he better make it home and show a finish and not landout. And if anyone wishes to do this and think it will increase his speed, please do so, I like to win. If cheaters like to come and try to win this way, of bagging laps or turnpoints before the start, then I have noticed that they make themselfs seen. As they have teeth marks on their foreheads, as they have bitten their ass which their heads are up. IMHO. # 711.
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