2005 SSA Handicaps Posted

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