JWGC USA update

Yep. I let out a scream of "NOOOOOO!!!!" on the last day when Boyd's tracker said he had landed out.

We certainly came close! We had some bad luck and plummeted from 6000ft AGL to 850ft without hitting any reasonable nibble. The sink was atrocious and the only reprieve was a weak little thermal over the field we were planning on landing in. All three of us, plus a straggler were parked in this little thermal, digging out. It was certainly a slow climb, but we got away and made it back home. Prior to plummeting out of the sky, we were really cooking along. If we had managed to keep the pace we were going and come back at minimum time, Boyd would have gotten third place. It was a good tactical gamble, but it did not work out.

Climbing out of that field was certainly exciting. It was the most fun low save I ever had, being in the company of three other gliders.

Best Regards,
Daniel

More complaining about IGC rules as if US rules are the solution. Sigh.

Absurdity is spending tremendous effort developing an entirely different, watered down set of competition rules (US rules, which serve only to isolate the USA from the rest of the world) and then attending the World Championship contest once every two years vs the very best pilots in the world flying under the rules (IGC) which they are all intimately familiar, practiced and coached and expecting to be competitive.

No assigned tasks, HATs, etc.

Insanity is doing this same exercise over and over, again and again and expecting a different result.

Our junior team faught extremely hard through a myriad of institutional handicaps. Just as our overall US team does. I feel it's a good time to point out the 200 ton elephant in "the room."

Congratulations to Boyd (9th), Daniel (15th) and JP (22nd) and their great coaches and crew. They truly did an incredible job despite tremendous disadvantages against most of the other teams.

The question is will the US take any action to help be more competitive. Answer: ?. ...back to the land of the soaring vacation? And the European teams (and Australia) go back to the land of incredible Junior development, training and culture.

Sean

On Saturday, December 12, 2015 at 9:52:19 AM UTC-5, Sean Fidler wrote:
More complaining about IGC rules as if US rules are the solution. Sigh.

Absurdity is spending tremendous effort developing an entirely different, watered down set of competition rules (US rules, which serve only to isolate the USA from the rest of the world) and then attending the World Championship contest once every two years vs the very best pilots in the world flying under the rules (IGC) which they are all intimately familiar, practiced and coached and expecting to be competitive.

No assigned tasks, HATs, etc.

Insanity is doing this same exercise over and over, again and again and expecting a different result.

Our junior team faught extremely hard through a myriad of institutional handicaps. Just as our overall US team does. I feel it's a good time to point out the 200 ton elephant in "the room."

Congratulations to Boyd (9th), Daniel (15th) and JP (22nd) and their great coaches and crew. They truly did an incredible job despite tremendous disadvantages against most of the other teams.

The question is will the US take any action to help be more competitive. Answer: ?. ...back to the land of the soaring vacation? And the European teams (and Australia) go back to the land of incredible Junior development, training and culture.

Sean

Sean, did you notice that the Junior Worlds had 50% TAT. Not 5% but 50% !!
So much for the AST theory.
Great job by all the Juniors competitors.

I think you may be confused with my position. I have been stating simple statistical facts on US/SSA tasking and these facts are very comprehensive per my annual report on US tasking proportions.

The USA/SSA has, of late, held roughly 5% (less than 10 task total) assigned tasks annually. That percentage has been shrinking. In fact, assigned tasks are on a trajectory to be zero in 2-3 years in the USA/SSA. The recent Junior Worlds ran roughly 6 assigned tasks in 11 flying days!

The IGC task guidance is 50% timed area tasks and 50% assigned racing tasks for a given competition. On good days, assigned tasks! Area tasks are secondary, assigned are preferred! This ratio was on target per IGC guidance at the Junior Worlds, yes.

The USA/SSA, on the other hand runs almost 70% timed area tasks (average radius 19 miles!). Again, only 5% assigned racing tasks. This is NOTHING like the IGC in my view. The USA, instead, runs their own unique (TIMED) Modified Assigned Tasks (affectionately known by some as the HAT or "half assed task" ;-)) which ranges from the INFAMOUS zero (pure OLC task) to one turn (basically OLC) to the so called "long MAT. Rhe UsA/SSA runs as money or more one and zero turn MATs than assigned racing tasks! The long MAT is designed to eat up almost all of the minimum time but calling the right task length is very difficult to get right. They are often not long enough and require a good deal of decision making at the end of the assigned portion. The problem with the MAT vs the pure Assigned racing Task it is actually extremely complex. Pilot workload is significantly increased. It favors proficiency with flight computers and requires significant heads down time contemplating various TP combination scenarios. It's like a high stakes casino really. You must put all your "chips" on the best additional turnpoints to add before heading to the finish in order to eat up any remaining minimum time. The key moments of the task is usually not the assigned racing portion but is the small fraction of the total task that is left to pilots choice. You can become a hero or a zero in a heartbeat. MATs are very much about calculating timing and playing with the computer to calculate potential options with visable weather. Nothing like the IGC at all.

These unique USA/SSA tasks are all intended to reduce land outs but the unintended consequences are they destroy tactical racing and further isolate the USA from international competition.

I think some of the comments from our junior team reflect this concern.

Sean

On Monday, December 14, 2015 at 9:20:00 PM UTC-6, Sean Fidler wrote:
The recent Junior Worlds ran roughly 6 assigned tasks in 11 flying days!

5 of 10 were assigned. Pretty easy to see this from the task sheets. "Roughly 6 in 11 flying days"? You are better with stats than that, Sean.

Average Area radius for the Club Class was 26.67 KM or 16.56 miles.

The US Team's top place on any day was on an assigned task. Where he was the only finisher. Think this means the assigned tasks were only on "the good days"? Well, three Std class pilots did top 130 KPH on that day, but everyone else was in the low to mid 80s on KPH.

At the last 15/18/Open Worlds, our best daily finish (again a 1st place) was by Dave Mockler on, are you ready for this, an ASSIGNED TASK.

Maybe the type of task flown at our nationals isn't quite as important as the tactics on when to start and who to fly with at the Worlds?

Just a few observations and comments from another who has not (yet) "been there, done that."

Steve Leonard

No, I strongly disagree. My facts are highly accurate (despite being typed from a car and from memory). 5/6 whatever. It's 50% IGC assigned tasks vs 5% (actually, I think it was 3% to be exact) assigned tasks in the USA. No Mats, no Hats whatsoever were run in Australia. I'm not sure how my point could be any more substantiated than that, sir.

I believe that flying the same rules (and therefore the same strategy and tactics), at all US contests, as the rest of the gliding competition world flys (safely and without issue or without mass exodus from the sport because "it is too hard") is important to the USA on many levels. We are embarrassing ourselves when "some" try to argue that our watered down US rules are not having a significant impact on our US team pilots ability to compete effectively at Gliding World Championships. At the same tim, the grand US rules "experiment" is not improving our participation numbers or satisfaction or enjoyment. For many it is in fact quite irritating to be isolated from the rest of the world.... Even our Zias ranking system is entirely different from the rest of the soaring worlds FAI pilot ranking. US pilots results from Us contests are not even added to that list anymore...

The general trend for US rules is continuing to move steadily towards more and more watering down of the tasking with the impossible goal of eliminating land outs or mass land outs. OLC "contests" are being seriously discussed, etc, etc, etc.

There is no reason we can't have fun at US contests (just as the rest of the world does...) while flying IGC rules. This is a general misconception that has led us down a resource intensive path (US rules) that has limited, neutral or negative value to our sport here in the USA. Our numbers are not increasing. "Hey, the tasking is easier now, I'm signing up" but wouldn't do so until this happened...said nobody ever. "Our pilot satisfaction is not demonstrably higher (with many it is lower). Yet we spend tremendous effort and endlessly debate and continuously modify our own unique US gliding competition rules on an annual basis. No rules are perfect. I know everyone means well, but is all this effort really worth the actual measured results? What is the goal for having our own US rules again? Why do we do all this again? Under what circumstances will we stop being the only country on earth up with its own gliding competition rules? Especially vs. the obvious benefits (time, resources, priorities, etc) of being on the same rules page with the rest of the worlds competition soaring community?

Who within the SSA has the power to force all of us US (and Candian) contest pilots to have to fly entirely different rules? Who are the cheerleaders? Who were the architects? Why do we allow this given the current return on investment?

I'll take the IGC rules and put the manpower we spend managing them to other uses which (in my opinion) are far more in need of attention for US soaring. It's like the flat tax. Get rid of the IRS. Simplify. We have a number of great guys on this "problem." who would (in my humble opinion) be far better utilized working on growth or junior soaring or increasing our US clubs cross country skills and culture, etc, etc, etc.

I am happy to get into the finer details but the broad, general policy of wrestling with our own unique US rules (completely isolating us from the rest of the soaring competition world) vs. simply utilizing IGC rules is something that HAS NEVER made any sense to me, whatsoever. I'm continuously baffled by it. Is it just me? No...

I look forward to some honest answers to the questions above...

Sean

No, I strongly disagree. My facts are highly accurate (despite being typed from a car and from memory). 5/6 whatever. It's 50% IGC assigned tasks vs 5% (actually, I think it was 3% to be exact) assigned tasks in the USA. No Mats, no Hats whatsoever were run in Australia. I'm not sure how my point could be any more substantiated than that, sir. ;-)

I believe that flying the same rules (and therefore the same strategy and tactics), at all US contests, as the rest of the gliding competition world uses (safely and without issue or without mass exodus from the sport because "it is too hard") is important to the USA on many levels. We are embarrassing ourselves when "some" try to argue that our watered down US rules are not having a significant impact on our US team pilots ability to compete effectively at FAI Gliding World Championships which are all run under IGC rules (the world standard). At the same time, the grand US rules "experiment" is not improving our participation numbers or satisfaction or enjoyment. For many, it is in fact quite irritating to be isolated from the rest of the world.... Even our own private US ranking system is entirely different from the rest of the soaring worlds FAI pilot ranking. US pilots results from US contests are not even added to that list anymore... Even more isolation.

The general trend for US rules is continuing to move steadily towards more and more watering down of the tasking with the impossible goal of eliminating land outs or mass land outs. OLC "contests" are being seriously discussed, etc, etc, etc.

There is no reason we can't have fun at US contests (just as the rest of the world does...) while flying IGC rules. This is a general misconception that has led us down a resource intensive path (US rules) that has limited, neutral or negative value to our sport here in the USA. Our numbers are not increasing. "Hey, the tasking is easier now, I'm signing up" but wouldn't do so until this happened...said nobody ever. "Our pilot satisfaction is not demonstrably higher (with many it is lower). Yet we spend tremendous effort and endlessly debate and continuously modify our own unique US gliding competition rules on an annual basis. No rules are perfect. I know everyone means well, but is all this effort really worth the actual measured results? What is the goal for having our own US rules again? Why do we do all this again? Under what circumstances will we stop being the only country on earth up with its own gliding competition rules? Especially vs. the obvious benefits (time, resources, priorities, etc) of being on the same rules page with the rest of the worlds competition soaring community?

Who within the SSA has the power to force all of us US (and Candian) contest pilots to have to fly entirely different rules? Who are the cheerleaders? Who were the architects? Why do we allow this given the current return on investment?

I'll take the IGC rules and put the manpower we spend managing them to other uses which (in my opinion) are far more in need of attention for US soaring. It's like the flat tax. Get rid of the IRS. Simplify. We have a number of great guys on this "problem." who would (in my humble opinion) be far better utilized working on growth or junior soaring or increasing our US clubs cross country skills and culture, etc, etc, etc.

I am happy to get into the finer details but the broad, general policy of wrestling with our own unique US rules (completely isolating us from the rest of the soaring competition world) vs. simply utilizing IGC rules is something that HAS NEVER made any sense to me, whatsoever. I'm continuously baffled by it. Is it just me? No...

I look forward to some honest answers to the questions above...

Sean

Sean:

Again. (And again, and again, and again): No country uses IGC rules. IGC rules, verbatim, are only applicable for world championships. Start right at entry is by nomination from National Aero Clubs. So how are you going to do entries for US nationals if you "use IGC rules?" Ask the NAC to decide who gets in to Nephi? And go on from there. Stewards, international jury, site selection, so forth. You simply cannot use these, verbatim, for national and regional contests. Every country creates a set of national rules, adapting IGC rules more or less.

Again. And again and again and again: The choice of assigned tasks vs. turn area tasks vs. MATs is completely up to the competition director. IGC rules have fixed proportions of tasks -- resulting in assigned tasks in thunderstorms because we used up the allowed fraction of turn area tasks. US rules do not have any fixed proportions. THIS IS ENTIRELY UP TO THE CD, not the rules. If you want assigned tasks, talk to your CD. Talk to your fellow pilots at nationals and convince them that's what they really want to do.

The clamor for "use IGC rules" would be much reduced if anyone bothered to actually read the rules before clamoring.

John Cochrane

at 13.5 Worlds, Francois and I's best result was on one of the 2 AAT days (1st and 2nd). Perhaps it was all the practice

I had a lot of fun crewing for JP. Our guys did a nice job flying together and it was a lot of fun to watch them. Invaluable experience. On to Lithuania!