Death of the 13.5m class?

Andy, why not just penalize the altitude gain and distance along course made during the engine run? It would all be in the log file and you wouldn't need to worry about what did it.

On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 12:33:07 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 11:58:40 AM UTC-8, jfitch wrote:
That is not entirely true. Some 'cruisy' type races allow engine runs with a penalty. There are assumptions made as to the advantage of the engine run. One interesting consequence was a 1st place due to motoring the entire course (I think it was the Ensenada race). One contestant brought a peculiar sailboat that could plane running a huge outboard motor and he did the course at 20 knots, far faster than the penalty contemplated. Maybe we will see 13.5m gliders with big jet engines and 8m wingspans....


It occurred to me that any penalty system might need to contemplate potential differences in the climb rate that would result from using the MOP. If you can climb at 5 knots instead of 2 knots under power the penalty might need to change. A 5 minute penalty per minute of MOP use would overwhelm the differences versus a glider that didn't use their MOP (and therefore discourage MOP use for purely tactical purposes), but between two gliders using MOPs with varying climb rates there would be a difference in outcome that would need to be addressed.

Again, to clarify, this is NOT a proposal for rules regulating motor use in mixed pure glider, motor glider racing. This is for 100% motorglider events (specifically, electric motorgliders).

I think it's an interesting concept. It's clearly not for those who see the risk of outlanding as a major part of the appeal of the sport. Vive la difference!

9B

On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 1:07:56 PM UTC-8, jfitch wrote:
Andy, why not just penalize the altitude gain and distance along course made during the engine run? It would all be in the log file and you wouldn't need to worry about what did it.

You definitely need to not give credit for cruise-climb distance made, but the bigger impact on speed is the benefit of the climb rate versus what otherwise would have been the case. You can't really directly subtract altitude, you have to turn it into either time or distance to translate the penalty to time/distance = speed.

If you can climb at 4 knots under power then a rough breakeven penalty versus a 1 knot climb without power would be around 7 minutes per minute under power. If you want to set the "breakeven" unpowered climb rate at 2 knots, it's around 4 minutes per minute under power and at 3 knots it's around 2.5 minutes per minute under power. Under each penalty structure it would be to the pilot's benefit to use the motor any time (s)he is faced with a climb slower than the breakeven rate. I picked 5 minutes per minute, or around 150 ft/min breakeven.

You could also turn altitude gain into a scored distance penalty at some sort of glide angle translation, assuming an L/D, which would correspond to a speed to fly for a lift condition. I haven't messed with that, but I assume you could construct something equivalent to the time penalty.

9B

New rules are what I'd imagine racing touring motor gliders would be, hero pilots only.
And motor laden pilots say having an engine doesn't change anything lolz. With intermittent motor runs record legal will the motor guys still argue to be in the same record class as pure gliders?
What'll be really funny to see is when the designers start building 'gliders' for winning under the new rules- it'll be electric airplane racing. Hmmm probably sponsorship money available in electric airplane racing.

No one is talking about changing the current rules for soaring world records.

No one is suggesting a change to the soaring world record rules...

On Monday, December 25, 2017 at 12:36:43 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
No one is suggesting a change to the soaring world record rules...

Not yet.