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#11
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Stewart Kissel wrote:
But then I fall into the category of non-racer making suggestions for something I don't participate in....so I will refrain from further ideas.... Of course, the key to keeping all racing viable sport in US, is to make sure that we don't end up with a bunch of classes (or rules) that end up killing any interest amongst those pilots who haven't tried racing. So I, for one (a "semi-racer", as I only do one or two contests per year), think the ideas that you and other "non-racers" (even M B ;^) come up with are every bit as valuable as those from "racers"... Marc |
#12
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Stewart Kissel wrote:
OOOHHH...I think you may be onto something here JJ... A class for ras posters only? Or maybe Kennedy assassination conspiracy believers? Lots of possibilities.... In response to the other parallel thread....my last post may have been unclear...I am not suggesting more entries allowed per contest...rather races being set up for the most contestants...ie a 50 contestant National Club Class vs a 15 contestant Open Class Nat... It may not be as poor a use of resources at it first seems, because low-participation classes like Open Class Nationals are usually run concurrently with another class; for example, this year the Open Class Nationals will overlap the Region 8 regional contest, so the same towplanes, facilities, contest director, etc., are used. Way in the past, I suggested we have handicapping similar to what is now the Club Class, but use it for the Standard and 15 meter classes so older gliders (within, say, 10% of the newest and best) would still be competitive. Not much interest at the time! While I like the Club Class concept, I suspect having one would not increase the contest participation, but would reduce the Sports Class participation as some pilots shifted to the Club Class. It would be a great survey question, I think! But then I fall into the category of non-racer making suggestions for something I don't participate in....so I will refrain from further ideas.... In the '80s, when I was an SSA director, I thought it was a weakness of our contest system that it did seek out the opinions of those that WERE NOT racing. It is still a weakness. I hope that a way will be found to include people that might become racers so their opinions can also help guide the rules committee. In other words, make increasing participation a goal of the rules, not just pleasing the pilots ALREADY racing. -- Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly Eric Greenwell Washington State USA |
#13
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Wasn't Kimo single-seat ground attack? I recall him touting the
advanatages of dumb bombs on 60 Minutes (over the Maverick). That would make him a defacto bomb aimer, no? Looks like you need one more layer of insulation, JJ. John Sinclair wrote: How about a Ex-military, over 70, class? Oops, that would include 7V and KS. OK, how about Rerited military, over 70? No that still leaves KS. OK, now I got it................ Retired military bomb-aimers, over 70, class? Bet I just found a class I can win. :) JJ |
#14
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The Club Class and 2-seater class works in europe because
there is a bunch of those ships available (from the neumerous clubs) In the US our ships are 98% privately owned and one can enter sports class where you can 'fly what you brung'. JJ I think that the term 'Club Class' is slightly misleading. Certainly in the UK the vast majority of 'club class' competing gliders are not club owned. I would say that in the UK Club Class Nationals 85-90% of the gliders are privately owned (if not more). Thus, it is not popular in Europe because there are no private owners. I rather think that it is popular because it allows people to get into a class which can be competed in at World level for a fraction of the cost of new gliders. As for whether the US needs a club class, I suspect the sports class satisfies most of the objectives. Owain |
#15
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we don't need another class...we just need to fix the one we have.....
I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class "more or less" to the very successful European Club Class (they actually have two versions there for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called the "racing class) My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders from the Sports class that already had a "competitive" class of their own.... Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow" any "current production" competition glider or variation thereof, from Sports class competition. Meaning..if you have a "racing" glider that is of a series currently being produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class it was designed for (15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you have a glider that has been surpassed by more competitive models from the manufacturer,then it could be handicapped and allowed into sports class... The main idea with this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older gliders (lower cost) to fly with their pilots competitively and let them fly in called tasks rather than having to design new scoring systems to meet the broadest array of handicaps. The other change to sports class I suggested was that no one would be allowed to fly in a sports class "National" contest, that had not participated in a Sports class regional contest within the preceding 3 years, thus keeping the class "pure" .....since it seems pilots who otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to rush top attend only when there is a title at stake....and then of course as we see it today, show up in droves to fly their latest ship... I never got any flack from these proposals except of course from those who were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but even most of them admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting the sports class and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older gliders a place to compete where they could more or less evenly match themselves and their ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which can't be bad for any of us... anyway.my 2c are there again..... tim -- Wings & Wheels www.wingsandwheels.com wrote in message oups.com... MC wrote: Any thoughts on the idea of creating a Club Class similar to the model used in Europe? Mike We got one, its called Sports Class. My God, we now have something like 8 classes, the last thing we need is ANOTHER CLASS. JJ |
#16
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Tim Mara wrote: we don't need another class...we just need to fix the one we have..... I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class "more or less" to the very successful European Club Class (they actually have two versions there for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called the "racing class) My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders from the Sports class that already had a "competitive" class of their own.... Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow" any "current production" competition glider or variation thereof, from Sports class competition. Meaning..if you have a "racing" glider that is of a series currently being produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class it was designed for (15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you have a glider that has been surpassed by more competitive models from the manufacturer,then it could be handicapped and allowed into sports class... The main idea with this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older gliders (lower cost) to fly with their pilots competitively and let them fly in called tasks rather than having to design new scoring systems to meet the broadest array of handicaps. The other change to sports class I suggested was that no one would be allowed to fly in a sports class "National" contest, that had not participated in a Sports class regional contest within the preceding 3 years, thus keeping the class "pure" .....since it seems pilots who otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to rush top attend only when there is a title at stake....and then of course as we see it today, show up in droves to fly their latest ship... I never got any flack from these proposals except of course from those who were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but even most of them admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting the sports class and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older gliders a place to compete where they could more or less evenly match themselves and their ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which can't be bad for any of us... anyway.my 2c are there again..... tim -- Wings & Wheels www.wingsandwheels.com Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you going to draw the line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines. How about the Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal to only allow real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't be all that hard to log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones options open. What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports nats when they are close and the other nationals when they are close. That's what I do and kind-a like it that way. JJ |
#18
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Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you going to draw the line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines. How about the Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal to only allow real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't be all that hard to log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones options open. What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports nats when they are close and the other nationals when they are close. That's what I do and kind-a like it that way. JJ Obviously the rules committee could have "some" hand in this...and of course they would have, but it've pretty obvious to anyone who watches the results what gliders are competing in the FAI classes and which ones are no longer showing up there.... It was justa very few seasons ago when the 15M class was filled with ASW20's, LS6's and Ventus........but look now....if you see even one or 2 there it's a suprise......so where are they now??? sitting at a club when the contest is nearby?? that's actually the point...in part ) as for flyinga regional to fly a national.that seems a no brainer to me.....and many others tim |
#19
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the problem with this handicapping is that you still have PW5's and Nimbus's
in the same class......you can never properly handicap such a field......and, there already is a class for the PW5 (World class) and one for the Nimbus (Open class) and 126's have their own class too..... a small restriction to who can fly what will go a long way towards allowing everyone to fly a 100K, 200K or 300K on the same day....and, like the FAI classes, even see another glider during the day. Not simply fly alone and to wherever and have no clue how they are doing, or learn by following others of "like" performance tim "M B" wrote in message ... I recommended that the CH handicaps simply be squared for Sports class. The PW-2 with 2.15 becomes 4.62 The Nimbus 3DM with .75 becomes .56 1-26 1.62 2.62 2-33 1.84 3.38 L-13 1.46 2.13 G103 1.15 1.32 ASW20 0.90 0.81 So the Nimbus would need to go 8.2 times faster (or further or whatever) to beat the PW-2 driver. This would favor the lower performance ships. Really, isn't the importance of Sports Class to make it distinct? I think squaring the handicap would make it much more insteresting and distinct. And the PW-2 guy doing a 30km task vs. the Nimbus guy with a 250km task sounds like a real race to me! And a 2-33 vs an ASW-20 SHOULD get about a 4:1 advantage, instead of a 2:1 advantage. I'd like to see this scoring at our fun meet coming up... As far as the other classes, I'm not sure how the 'standard' class has lived so long. Also, every contest seems to be a 'seniors' contest anyway, so dunno about that one :P A 2-place contest class? Sports and open-unlimited should be enough for this. Finally, who cares about motorglider class? For the flying portion of the contest, isn't it just the 'fixed ballast' class? These guys say 'it's just a glider' so I'd like to see it just treated that way. I'm aware of the subtlety of 'landouts' but I think there is an elegant way to even the playing field for this (some penalty for landout, doubled for engine use). So those are four I'm not so sure about. Sports, 15 meter, and open-unlimited seem to be the three real viable ones. With the squared handicap, lowest performers will tend to Sports, the tilters and flappers that qualify will go 15-meter, and the sexy big glass in open. I think every successful multiclass contest has at least two of these three classes, right? The rest seem to be very 'specialty' classes. Nothing wrong with that, except it gets a little harder to get throngs motivated for so many 'class' competitions At 17:00 04 April 2005, wrote: Tim Mara wrote: we don't need another class...we just need to fix the one we have..... I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class 'more or less' to the very successful European Club Class (they actually have two versions there for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called the 'racing class) My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders from the Sports class that already had a 'competitive' class of their own.... Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow' any 'current production' competition glider or variation thereof, from Sports class competition. Meaning..if you have a 'racing' glider that is of a series currently being produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class it was designed for (15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you have a glider that has been surpassed by more competitive models from the manufacturer,then it could be handicapped and allowed into sports class... The main idea with this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older gliders (lower cost) to fly with their pilots competitively and let them fly in called tasks rather than having to design new scoring systems to meet the broadest array of handicaps. The other change to sports class I suggested was that no one would be allowed to fly in a sports class 'National' contest, that had not participated in a Sports class regional contest within the preceding 3 years, thus keeping the class 'pure' .....since it seems pilots who otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to rush top attend only when there is a title at stake....and then of course as we see it today, show up in droves to fly their latest ship... I never got any flack from these proposals except of course from those who were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but even most of them admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting the sports class and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older gliders a place to compete where they could more or less evenly match themselves and their ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which can't be bad for any of us... anyway.my 2c are there again..... tim -- Wings & Wheels www.wingsandwheels.com Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you going to draw the line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines. How about the Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal to only allow real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't be all that hard to log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones options open. What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports nats when they are close and the other nationals when they are close. That's what I do and kind-a like it that way. JJ Mark J. Boyd |
#20
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1) Standard
... 10) 1-26 All these have a Nationals. So, JJ missed a few. Technically, the 1-26 Association makes it own rules for its (international) Championships, not SSA, let alone FAI, although I take the broader sense of "we" and "having" a Nationals, in which case you might even go on to Vintage (VSA), Aerobatics (IAC/EAA) or Intercollegiate (CSA -- ask me about it)... I really only bring this up to point out that, by contrast, SSA does have an official Nationals scheme for FAI-inspired X/C soaring classes... 11) Juniors (including Rudy Mozer Champion trophy) 12) Women with "the" Nationals being a pseudo-contest of best scores obtained at ANY SSA-sanctioned Nationals (past Junior Champions have done their thing in World Class, Sports, 15m, Std...). --JHC |
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