Video on contest safety

Dan I only see that on adsb out/in not power flarm!

I find alarm id / flarm net spreads out the gaggle, and raises my enjoyment of a contest. With only visual, you have to stick right with the gaggle not to lose them. With flarm radar, you can go a few miles off, explore something, try a different cloud, and yet if the chips are down not lose sight of the gaggle. It's also nice to see what others are doing some miles away and how it's working out.

John Cochrane BB

Well, I’m not seeing any support on breaking up the gaggles............does this mean most of us secretly like the gaggle? Have we found ways to use the gaggle to our advantage? Obviously, the low end of the score sheet doesn’t want to fly alone, but it’s looking like the other end of the score sheet might like to keep things just the way the are?
Just thinking out loud, here!
JJ

Thanks Cliff, got a suggested solution?Â* At present my flying buddy has
ADS-B out and no Flarm so I appreciate being able to "see" him when not
in direct visual contact.Â* I know I could turn off ADS-B in my Flarm
unit, but that would reduce other safety issues as we do often fly in
the arrival paths to ABQ.

On 4/17/2020 8:24 PM, wrote:
Dan I only see that on adsb out/in not power flarm!

--
Dan, 5J

It seems to me that our rules support gaggling, rather than taking direct action to reduce their importance! I flew to 1980(?) Ephrata 15 meter nationals where something like 80 entrants flew. I remember vividly one thermal on the high ground north of the field, everybody in the contest was in that thermal and the lift stopped at 3000 AGL! The guy directly above me decided to leave and pushed over...........I was forced to push over too, I could clearly see the rivets on his gear doors! There was 4 mid-airs in that contest and one fatality. We restricted the total entrants and made other changes, but no direct action to reduce gaggles.

How about bringing back the Start Time Interval? It could work something like this: It takes 1:00 hour to launch the fleet + :15 minutes to open the gate, now we add a reasonable decision time, say :15 minutes. All contestants have an STI of 1:30. The launch spacing would spread out the required starting times! We basically did this in the first Sports Class Nationals held at Minden 1985 (?) where contestants picked their launch time, but were required to start within :15 minutes after launch! The CD could change the STI as required, but everyone’s clock would start at the end of his/ her STI, unless they had started before each pilots STI, expired.

I believe this would reduce the stress level that is almost overwhelming in out Nationals today..........pilots under extreme stress don’t make good decisions!
JJ

I think that was Ephrata 1984, JJ. I missed that one, fortunately.

I would argue that we did take one action to reduce gaggling: you no longer have to radio to announce your start time. Some pilots didn't announce it for a while anyway. But today if you're contemplating a leeching or gaggling strategy, you have to find your tow before the start and stick with him/her like glue. You can't just hover at the top of the start cylinder and wait until KS or one of his known shadowers announces and then jump on the end of the freight train.

Another way is to reduce the number of gliders. I flew a nationals last year with 8 competitors. True, we had another 9 (wow!) pilots in another class, although we didn't always fly the same task. There's a lot less gaggling in single-digit contests. We seem to be headed there more and more for a variety of reasons, many of them outside of our control. That said, sometimes I've felt like our efforts to make competition "purer" for the top echelon have made it less attractive for many to enter contests.

Chip Bearden
JB

Don’t staggered start times introduce a little too much luck into the equation? Conditions change over time. I remember when F1 car racing had qualifying with each car setting times alone. Track conditions and weather conditions changed over the session and it became a crap shoot.

On blue/ difficult days, which we have alot of, no matter what you do to spread out the start I guarantee you on the first leg everyone is going to get together and gaggle up.
The first guys to lead out are going to get caught from behind, and when the new gaggle gets stuck for a few minutes trying to get up more are more that are going to dogpile in there. Rinse and repeat.

I was surprised with this gaggle concern that completion pilots voted for the adoption of the IGC rule package which clearly promotes gaggle flying to be successful.

Out of the what 350+ Pilots who are on the US Competition ranking, how many are going to any world meet? Very few. For The rest of us to have to fly the IGC rule package that really promotes gaggle flying?
I understand the argument that US pilots need to fly by the rules that the rest of the world flys by to help them be successful in world competition.
But that really shoots a hole in any plans to alleviate the current USA gaggle concerns so many seem to be up in arms about.
But I personally think this gaggle problem is going away by its self, and as Chip pointed out contests on a whole are getting smaller and smaller, before we know it is going to come down to Mike Marshall and Daniel Szahin, there going to be the only ones left soon enough.
Don't crash & pick up your trash [Bruno]
Nick
T

Actually Nick, IGC rules don’t promote gaggling anymore than US rules. This is a false narrative being fed to US pilots by a small group that does not wish to see change. Current IGC rules with the greater reward for higher speed encourages more aggressive flying.

The big concern for top pilots is not gaggles on course but leeching at the start to give a leech pilot an advantage of starting a few minutes behind the better pilots. This is easily fixed with the PEV before start.

The biggest issue with gaggles is prestart when there are few thermals and the the top pilots are trying to evade the leeches. Again the PEV will help with this because just following a top pilot around won’t help if only they know when they are going to start and the leech no longer gets an advantage for starting later. It becomes less important to blindly follow an other pilot prestart.

I have only flown twice with significant gaggles on course. 2012 15m US Nationals where we had to dead glide 15 miles to lift and we ended up with one big gaggle on the whole course and 15m WGC 2018 when the IGC tried the 10 minute start interval and we had 38 gliders start Grand Prix style at the same time. It was like a motocross holeshot dive to the first thermal. The first one there got a clean climb and the rest had to fight for space.

The fastest way around a task is with a group of three to four gliders. That is why most top pilots fly in small groups and not alone. More than four and the group can’t climb well. But having two to four increases the odds of finding better lines and climbs. Even in the US Nationals, especially in the East you will see small groups form before start. Western flying requires less of it, but it is still very helpful in Uvalde and Hobbs..

Tim (TT)

On Sunday, April 19, 2020 at 10:21:26 AM UTC-6, Nick Kennedy wrote:
On blue/ difficult days, which we have alot of, no matter what you do to spread out the start I guarantee you on the first leg everyone is going to get together and gaggle up.
The first guys to lead out are going to get caught from behind, and when the new gaggle gets stuck for a few minutes trying to get up more are more that are going to dogpile in there. Rinse and repeat.

I was surprised with this gaggle concern that completion pilots voted for the adoption of the IGC rule package which clearly promotes gaggle flying to be successful.

Out of the what 350+ Pilots who are on the US Competition ranking, how many are going to any world meet? Very few. For The rest of us to have to fly the IGC rule package that really promotes gaggle flying?
I understand the argument that US pilots need to fly by the rules that the rest of the world flys by to help them be successful in world competition..
But that really shoots a hole in any plans to alleviate the current USA gaggle concerns so many seem to be up in arms about.
But I personally think this gaggle problem is going away by its self, and as Chip pointed out contests on a whole are getting smaller and smaller, before we know it is going to come down to Mike Marshall and Daniel Szahin, there going to be the only ones left soon enough.
Don't crash & pick up your trash [Bruno]
Nick
T

Here are a few uninformed ideas after reading this whole thread: It sounds like the biggest problem with gaggles is the shear number of gliders in the gaggles. So, taking steps to reduce that number would be the way to go. In the US with declining numbers of pilots racing, eventually this will be a non-issue. However, while there are still 60+ pilots entered at a contest, a few ideas come to mind. Many contests seem to involve multiple classes. Why not set a different task, with a different starting area for each class? This would thin out the starting gaggle considerably. If this isn't enough, then limit the entrants to each class to say 8 to 12 entries, or whatever arbitrary number the CD feels would be a "safe" number of pilots to have in a gaggle at the start.

Or, you could have the same task set, but have different start times, separated by a significant enough length of time, that the first class to launch would all be started before the next class launches. This would require the starting gate to be open for a set time, and everyone would need to start during that window though.

These measures would help to reduce the "congestion" at the start of the task.

Just my $0.02. Take it for what it's worth.