Club Class gliders and Handicaps in Polish Nationals June 2018

I saw a ****load of Jantar 2’s and 3’s on the list of competitors.

At 04:04 12 May 2018, ASM wrote:
I saw a ****load of Jantar 2=E2=80=99s and 3=E2=80=99s on the
list of
compe=
titors.


For the Polish Nationals? To be expected.
For the Worlds - 3 listed at the moment - usually a lot more.
Anyway does not take away from the handicapping discrepancies in the
'new' FAI list.

For South African club class competitions, there are three handicap lists depending on the strength of the day. The strength (weak, intermediate or strong) and which list is applied depends on the speeds of the winning gliders. For example, the system recognises that on week days and slower speeds, there is little difference between a Std Class and 15m Class glider. As the speeds go up - the advantage of having flaps increases and so the handicap for the 15m gliders increases relatively to the Std gliders. It's an attempt to try get a very broad range of gliders to compete with some sort of fairness in a wide range of conditions. No handicap system will have all the pilots happy - but least the South African approach does take cognesence of the fact that the conditions of the particular day may favour one glider over another.