2005 SSA Handicaps Posted

Anybody want to write a dynamic handicapping system ... something that
would take all the flight logs from a contest to analyze task length,
thermal strength, height and working band, spacing, wind strength (all
by time of day) ... and come up with a 'fair' handicap for the day.

KK

Ken Kochanski (KK) wrote:
Anybody want to write a dynamic handicapping system ... something
that
would take all the flight logs from a contest to analyze task length,
thermal strength, height and working band, spacing, wind strength
(all
by time of day) ... and come up with a 'fair' handicap for the day.

KK

The Soaring Society of South Africa has come up with a dynamic handicap
system. It is based on three senarios - weak, intermediate and strong.
The senario applied will be based on the top speeds of the day. The
whole system is normalised to the ASW 20. An example of how it works is
that an ASW 17 will fly off a handicap of 109% to the ASW 20 on a weak
day but only 102% on a strong day. An ASW 27 will fly of a 106%
handicap to the ASW 20 on a weak day but 113% on a strong day. The
system is still very new but has been used in the last Nationals and at
the Gauteng Regionals and will be used at the North West Regionals at
the end of this month. More details can be found on the SSSA website
(sssa.org.za)

Clinton
Lak 12

US rules had "windicapping" as part of the rules a few years ago. This
was based upon logic that wind is the largest variable that a single
handicap number can't deal with.
It was in place for a couple years and never really got used, so it was
dropped. It definitely slows down the whole scoring process and would
make the scoring program much more complex.
It is of some significance that in order to get the scoring program
guys to do this we would likely have to get them very drunk for a very
long time.
UH
SSA Rules Subcommittee Chair

We have tried it all over the past 30 years, wind-capping,
weight-capping, day-capping, sight-capping, pilot-capping. The only
thing that stuck was day-capping, we now call that day-devaluation
based on the number of finishers. Playing with the numbers on a daily
basis leaves the pilots with the feeling that the whole thing is quite
liquid. Just bitch enough and you can get someone to change things to
help your score. Wind-capping was the worst, what wind, at what
altitude, in what valley, at what time of day?????

I'm thinking about writing the history of handicap racing in the US.
Who remembers the red and green books? Scratch task distance divided by
your handicap to determine the minimum distance triangle you must fly
out of the red book? Want to carry water, add 5% to your numbers, but
you must pay for it all week long.

Earlier, wrote:

Who remembers the red and green books?

Sorta off topic, but who remembers those awful speed-limited gates with
a pyramid sight, a finish gate and a speed gate? I worked one or two of
those at Minden in, what was it, early 1980s?

What with wind, altitude, and CAS/TAS/IAS conversions, it was a mess.
It seemed that nobody was sorry to see them eliminated.

Bob K.

wrote:

US rules had "windicapping" as part of the rules a few years ago. This
was based upon logic that wind is the largest variable that a single
handicap number can't deal with.
It was in place for a couple years and never really got used, so it was
dropped. It definitely slows down the whole scoring process and would
make the scoring program much more complex.
It is of some significance that in order to get the scoring program
guys to do this we would likely have to get them very drunk for a very
long time.
UH
SSA Rules Subcommittee Chair
IMVHO the reason windicapping was not used was due to flawed implementation.
A PST first turnpoint could have been disallowed as less than the minimum
distance when windicapping was applied. The pilot while in flight would
have no easy way of discerning this. In fact, while scoring Region 9 a few
years ago I had to toss windicapping for exactly this reason.

Frank Whiteley