Seniors Contest

Fred Mueller wrote:

I'm kinda new at this,

New enough that you haven't used a finish line with the ground at the
bottom? If you haven't, it might be harder to understand how it works
out in practice.

but here's my two cents worth. There is an
advantage to a finish line that we don't see with a cylinder finish.
Everyone is funneled through a fairly precise point so we know where to
look for traffic and we have a fairly good idea how their pattern to
land will look. In a cylinder finish, all bets are off and every type
of pattern entry known to man from every possible direction is
accomplished along with often unpredictable results,

I don't see this happening in the contests I've flown with large, high
cylinder finishes. All the pilots that had a good finish have been able
to use the standard pattern to land. Pilots that did not have a good
finish often used non-standard patterns, such as rolling finishes or no
downwind leg, and so on.

this is especially
bad during a MAT or when different classes are finishing from different
directions.

My experience is the low finish line is worse in these conditions,
because the pilots are NOT being "funneled" (brought along a small angle
sector) to a precise point: they arriving_ spread out more or less along
the line from many different directins, including 180 degrees apart,
with some hooking the gate and doing a very non-standard pattern entry.
I've even seen 180s after a finish, with the glider landing back into
the oncoming finishers.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:
Fred Mueller wrote:

I'm kinda new at this,


New enough that you haven't used a finish line with the ground at the
bottom? If you haven't, it might be harder to understand how it works
out in practice.


Not that new.

Fred

My experience is th low finish line is worse in these conditions,
because the pilots are NOT being "funneled" (brought along a small
angle
sector) to a precise point: they arriving_ spread out more or less
along
the line from many different directins, including 180 degrees apart,
with some hooking the gate and doing a very non-standard pattern
entry.
I've even seen 180s after a finish, with the glider landing back into

the oncoming finishers.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

I'm still on the fence on this one, but here's my "philosophy" on
rules. I think the primary purpose of the rules should be to protect
me from you (the imperial you - not any of the current posters :-), not
to protect me from myself. With that in mind, I feel like mid-air
collision avoidance should be the primary purpose of the finishing
routine, whether it be gate or cylinder. Given my very selfish goal,
which finishing routine does a better job? I have to say that in my
first 15 years of racing using a high speed gate, I really never had
any close calls. I found the situational awareness to be relatively
manageable given good radio ettiquette and a reaonable level of
professionalism among the other competitors. I have a lot less
experience with the cylinder, but my recollection from the few that
I've flown was a slightly increased nervousness about people
approaching from numerous directions, resulting in more slumped
shoulders (ie. trying to make myself feel like a small target).

So, which finishing routine does a better job of facilitating the
avoidance of a midair?

Erik Mann
LS8-18 (P3)