Establishing Club Class/Too Many Nationals/Not Enough Competitors

On Sep 29, 2:52*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:
Since the topic of travel / distance (in the USA) and lots of club
competitions (in the BGA) came up, let me ask this:

1) UK pilots: *Can you actually take enough time off work and such to
compete in many of these 7 - 9 day competitions each year? *Or do
folks still only go to 1 or 2 apiece?

2) USA pilots: *If more Regionals were added, could you actually _go_
to a greater number of Regionals each year?

I've talked about this in another thread, but it seems to me that a
big factor in competition attendance is time-off-work and/or time-away-
from-family... At least for us non-retired pilots (read: young-punks /
whipper-snappers)! *A week is a long time to be gone, especially if
you're trying to do it several times each year. *This is why I brought
up the subject of shorter club/casual competitions in another thread -
it seems like a better way to get newbies into competition and to get
local clubs doing some fun-and-challenging flying... *but I don't want
to hijack this thread here.

Let me just conclude with this question: *Is there a consensus among
pilots about the primary purpose of Regionals? *Is it to introduce new
people to competitive flying, is it to support "fun" contest-flying,
or is it a part of the "elimination" / ranking process to pick a US
Team?

Pick a primary purpose/goal and shape the event around that. *If other
events are required to meet other needs, then organize those events
around that other particular goal. *A competition can certainly be
both fun AND tough, but if you try to make one event all-things-to-all-
people its just going to be a mess...

--Noel

This is extracted from SSA Sports Regional Rules for 2008.
1.1 ‡ † The purpose of a Regional Sport Class Soaring Championships is
to determine a Regional Sport Class Champion, to measure the
performance of all entrants, and to provide an entry level for pilots
new to competitive sailplane racing to learn the skills and procedures
used in competition. Performance in Regionals will be used to provide
a basis for pilots to qualify for entry into future soaring
Championships.
1.2 ‡ Handicapping will be applied to minimize score differences
due to performance differences between sailplanes.
Extracted from FAI class Nationals-
1.0 ‡ PURPOSE
The purpose of a National FAI Class Soaring Championship is to
determine a National FAI Class Champion and to measure the performance
of all entrants. Performance in Nationals will be used to provide a
basis for pilots to qualify for entry into future soaring
Championships and to select pilots for the U.S. Team in International
Competition.
Note that they clearly define the significantly different objectives
of these types of events
There are statements of purpose in 1.1 of each of the different rules
packages all of which can be viewed on the SSA web site if you want to
look at how they vary for the different events.
Happy reading
UH

On Sep 29, 7:52*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:

1) UK pilots: *Can you actually take enough time off work and such to
compete in many of these 7 - 9 day competitions each year? *Or do
folks still only go to 1 or 2 apiece?

snip

If you are refering to the Inter-Club League, they are arranged in
small groups of geographically adjacent clubs and flown at the
weekend, so not time off work is required. Also my own club will
field a different team each day- the longest drive for folks at my
club would be a little over 2 hours club-to-club. A sporting retrieve
could take a lot longer of course.

Tim,

Restricting nationals to 35 pilots would accomplish nothing except to remove
30 pilots from the contest. I don't think numbers 31-65 would be too
thrilled with this idea. As for prestige, some might argue that the bigger
the field the greater the "prestige."

Contest organizers would be less likely to lose their shirts financially
with the larger turnout as well. (Remember Steamboat?)

Karl Striedieck


"Tim" wrote in message
...
Karl:

Thanks for the constructive critiscism. Just a few answers to your
points:

1) I totally agree that the purpose of our contest rules and contests
themselves should be geared toward the selection of the best pilots
from among the population of racing pilots. Period, end of discussion.
By being a little bit "warm and fuzzy" with my goals I was trying to
soften my proposals a little bit.

My real feeling is that our contests in general, but specifically
nationals, should never be a mere "easy chance to race" or a "racing
vacation." US national contests should be aimed at determining the
best of the best. If you are going to the US nationals in any class,
you should be going because you have a legitimate chance to place well
(or have aspiratioins of acheiving that goal in time) AND that you
have the fire to really compete against the best of the best so that
we, as a cummunity, may select a national champion in each class each
year.

By restricting the number of pilot slots available at any particular
nationals site (35/35) my thinking was to make the entry into and
caliber of any particular nationals more prestigious/elite. If I have
my facts correct, not just anyone can show up at a German nationals -
you have to qulaify to get in (i.e. have a top 35 pilot raninking in
class). I think it should be so here in the U.S. But we would have to
go at this goal relatively slowly so we did not shock the system. Or
not!

AND, hopefully, this would result in cosnsitently full contests
(65-70) for every nationals held, east or west, north or south. This
would be a boon to contest organizers I am sure and maybe spur new
organizations to get on board.

2) No, Montague and Mifflin are SUPERB Nationals sites and should
absolutely be bidding for nationals as long as the contest
organizations can be kept together and motivated to put them on. If
you are an elite racing pilot hoping to make the US Team or to develop
your racing skills to the level of US Team pilots, you should be
willing to drive to the very corners of the US, every year, to make
this goal of yours a reality. My only point was that the current super-
regionals like Perry, Parowan have their place in this envisaged
system (as maybe East/West Championships - not the level of US
Nationals, but somehow ranked above the regional contest level) and
can take up some of the demand for "racing vacations" and getting
together with soaring friends as the sole goal of attending a
nationals for some.

3) It is not so much the rules that need massive change. But the RC
should take a stronger line on some of its "suggestions" and make them
into rules and mandate their usage, even if only for 1 year. For
example, if the RC would place some restrictions on entry to nationals
(be it limiting number through double sited contests, or whatever),
the level of competition might rise. If the RC mandated that the
winners of regionals and the East & West contest winners gained
automatic entry to nationals, there would be something concrete to aim
for by those going up the ladder from newbie to racer, to beteter raer
to national champion hopeful. The RC tried to add Windicapping to
sports class a few years ago. No one did it becasue it was not a
mandate but rather a suggestion. Is it any wonder the concpet was neot
tried and the idea was abandoned. If you do not hold contest
organizers feet to the coals to neforce changes in ruels or provide
incentives to contest pilots to follow certain actions, then it will
never happen. I wouldlike to see the RC be a little more activist in
trying to reverse the trends we all see but seem powerless as
individuals to stop.

4) To make it to the top of ANY medal stand is a tremendous honor and
acheivement. I did not mean to lessen anyone's national championship.
However, the "meaningfullness" of a National Championship is directly
linked, in my mind, to the quality of the competition - the entire
competition.When you are in a contest and many, many pilots are
multiple thousands of points behind the leaders you have to wonder if
those pilots are there to race? Yes, bad luck happens under our
scoring ssytem - I've fallen prey to that myself lately.However, if
the entire US racing community can only muster maybe 10 pilots in each
class to be within 1,000 points (or so) of the leaders at the end of a
10 day nationals, then is the top being really pushed. Restricting the
number of pilots per class at my so-called "double nationals" might be
one way to make this happen. By having only the top 35 standard and
top 35 15-m drivers (for just one example) at a co-located nationals,
every pilot would have had to race his way in by their high pilot
ranking or winning a regionals or east/west contest. I can not see how
the level of comeptition woudl not go up.

5) I agree that our WGC Pilot selection is really as fair as we can
make it given the current limitations of time, distance, and money in
our giant country. It levels the playing field between east and west
coast pilots unwilling to make the drive across the country, Further
it avoids the political infighting associated with voting for pilots
or the various other ways other teams pick their pilots. But then
maybe we need to open up discussions at the RC-level and US Team-level
(ABD betweenthe two) to develop a system of racing at Nationals and
team selection so that we may bring home the gold at future worlds?

I am not the best thinker of the nuts and bolts of implementation,
that is what the folks on the RC seem to be best at. But I would love
to see some "out-of-the box" strategic thinking that will improve
racing year to year in all classes AND get our best team tot he WGC's.

My modified goals for a revised contest system:
- Full Contests (for organizers for competitors).
- Higher level of/Best possible competition at every Nationals.
- Better competiton at new East & West Championship Contests (winners
get automatic entry to "their" nationals).
- Continued relaxed nature of Regionals, limited to in region
competitors or maybe adjoining regions competitors, encouraging
newbies and local champions.

Thanks for your citicisms Karl and I hope this spurs some high-level
debate. We too hope to get to Parowan soon as well. But given limited
time and money combined with distance...

Tim McAllister EY

On Sep 26, 3:20 pm, "Karl Striedieck" wrote:
Tim,

Thanks for taking a lot of time to make constructive suggestions for
improvement in the US competition soaring scene. UH and other committee
members check this forum and I'm sure they will discuss your ideas at the
annual committee meeting in November in Houston.

Following are some observations/questions on your summary suggestions.



RC, please give the current structure of our Nationals, Super-
Regionals, Regionals a good look and see if we can't tweak or make
wholesale changes in the structure to acehieve what I think we all
want:

1) Good Fun, Comraderie and Racing

While we hope to experience "fun" and "comraderie" at contests this is
should be considered to be a desired accidental byproduct and not one of
the
stated purposes in the rules. Soaring competition as controlled by SSA
sanctioned regional and national contests should continue to have as their
only objective the selection of the best pilots. If the Blackburns,
Hudsons,
Spratts, Nixons and Kellermans add a dimension of hilarity to the pilots
meetings, great! Many find it worth the entry fee alone.

2) Rationale contest options (i.e. Montague is not a good option for
most east coast pilots, nor is MIfflin for Western pilots)

Are you saying Montague (and Ephrata), Mifflin (and Elmira) are unsuitable
for hosting national contests due to the driving distances?

3) Opportunity for Newbies and clear ladder to higher level
competition for newbies

What would you add to the rules to achieve this? There are presently a
number of provisions in the rules and procedures that address this area.
Reverse seeding at "sold out" sports class contests and mentoring of new
pilots are two that come to mind.

4) Truely meaningful races for National Championships

What is not "meaningful' about nationals now and how would you change it.
I
don't know anyone who has won a nationals that wasn't pretty proud of it.

5) The best National Team selections possible - hopefully leading to a
new US World Champion

If our objective is to send our best pilots to the world comps (WGC) the
present selection system seems about optimum except for the tinkering that
has been done to the select pilots for the Club WGC from our sports class.
For a couple reasons, all of which have nothing to do with selecting the
best pilot, we have reduced the odds of sending a winner. Pilots who have
been on a US team in an FAI class (Open, 18M, 15M, Sports) are excluded,
as
are pilots who don't fly a glider meeting the handicap range of the WGC.
This means that the first six finishers at this year's sport nationals are
not eligible for the 2010 US Team.

I doubt that anyone who has flown against the winner, Rick Walters, would
rank him below the number seven finisher as the most likely to succeed at
at
the 2010 Club WGC.

There may be compensating reasons for the modified selection process, but
let's not pretend they have anything to do with sending the pilot with the
best chance of bringing home the gold.

All the best Tim. Hope to see you at Parowan.

Karl Striedieck





Sincerely and respectfully submitted,
Tim McAllister EY- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -