The SSA-OLC

Andy, the USNO is the definitive authority on sunset time--there is no
arbitrary SSA definition of sunset. USNO makes online calculators
available that compute sunrise and sunset for any place, for a single
day, or a table for an entire year. So the data is easily accessible.

Now as far as what to do, the SSA policy is uniform for OLC, B&R and
contests--the flights are to be "disqualified". For contests, that
means zero points for the day, plus a possible penalty. For B&R it
means the claim is denied. For OLC, to be consistent with the
international practices, we request that the pilot remove the claim.

If you think this is too severe, you need to make that request to the
SSA Board. But I don't think they will accept that an "insignificant"
penalty is consistent with the SSA policy that FAR's must be observed.

Andy wrote:
Doug Haluza wrote:
So yes, we are talking about violations that are obvious in the IGC log files, because that is the evidence we have. We don't have usable evidence of cloud bases, so that
point is moot.

Doug,

I don't have any problem at all with rejecting flight logs that have
evidence of gross FAR violation.

All I have lobbied for is a more reasonable interpretation of the
sunset rule. I have stated that many, if not most, if not all, pilots
break some FARs and I get tired of the preaching from those that seem
to claim they never had a flight that ever broke one FAR.

End soaring flight at sunset and reject logs with gross violations of
the sunset rule and I'll say no more. Let the FAA decide if they want
to take enforcement action against a pilot that lands a few minutes
after sunset.

If you do that I don't care how you define sunset. The consequence of
landing a minute after SSA sunset time will be an insignificant number
of points.

Andy