Death of the 13.5m class?

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

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

Jeff Morgan wrote on 12/23/2017 9:58 PM:
On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 4:50:23 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:

Imagine a scoring system where you get 5 minutes added to your time on course for every minute you run your MOP. If you did a 4 knot climb under power for 15 minutes to get home it would cost you about an incremental hour, so you'd only be inclined to use it when the alternative is landing out.


Easy fix. Since the motor is to prevent the land-out score it this way:

Starting Motor = Land Out.

The benefit is avoiding the inconvenience of the land out. Back to the airport in time for BBQ and beer, hope for better the next day.

But you still have the situation where the motor changes the game in various ways.
One is the glider with a motor will do more poorly in weak weather with it's
higher wing loading; another is the pilot can push on during a poor day, knowing
he will achieve the best score he can, and still be able to return home easily -
no lengthy midnight retrieve to leave him too tired to fly the next day.

Longing for "Purity" in the sport is normal, but we don't share a common
definition of "pure": a dedicated 1-26 pilot might think it's a distinction
without a difference when you talk about an 18 meter glider with or without a
motor. For me, a long-time self-launcher owner, a class that uses hybrid scoring
sounds interesting, and I look forward to the experiment.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

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.

If this is "soaring," then no external power or induced thrust should be allowed. Start the engine, turn a prop (or turbine, or compressed air jet, or stick an oar out the window or whatever) and you are now a powered aircraft. In competition, the flight STOPS THERE. (Just like the OLC.) No exceptions. If you elect to augment your flight to make it home when getting too low for comfort and do not want to accept a landout, too bad. The scoresheet should reflect that you decided to terminate soaring flight at that point.

Also remember that virtually ALL external power sources (Reciprocating engine, Turbine or Electric CAN fail. And the insidious "Emergency Algorithm" dictates that it will most probably fail at the absolutely WORST time, i.e., too low over bad terrain when you have not previously selected an appropriate landing area and planned how to get in to it safely.

An auxiliary power source is a neat thing to have. Just remember that it is NOT a "Safety" device. It is best if you just treat it as a way to avoid inconvenience. Betting on it to save your sorry butt in a competition (or on any flight) is just asking for trouble.

On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 7:39:40 PM UTC-7, wrote:
If this is "soaring," then no external power or induced thrust should be allowed. Start the engine, turn a prop (or turbine, or compressed air jet, or stick an oar out the window or whatever) and you are now a powered aircraft. In competition, the flight STOPS THERE. (Just like the OLC.) No exceptions. If you elect to augment your flight to make it home when getting too low for comfort and do not want to accept a landout, too bad. The scoresheet should reflect that you decided to terminate soaring flight at that point..

Also remember that virtually ALL external power sources (Reciprocating engine, Turbine or Electric CAN fail. And the insidious "Emergency Algorithm" dictates that it will most probably fail at the absolutely WORST time, i.e.., too low over bad terrain when you have not previously selected an appropriate landing area and planned how to get in to it safely.

An auxiliary power source is a neat thing to have. Just remember that it is NOT a "Safety" device. It is best if you just treat it as a way to avoid inconvenience. Betting on it to save your sorry butt in a competition (or on any flight) is just asking for trouble.

I agree with this completely!

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

On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 6:39:40 PM UTC-8, wrote:
If this is "soaring," then no external power or induced thrust should be allowed. Start the engine, turn a prop (or turbine, or compressed air jet, or stick an oar out the window or whatever) and you are now a powered aircraft. In competition, the flight STOPS THERE. (Just like the OLC.) No exceptions. If you elect to augment your flight to make it home when getting too low for comfort and do not want to accept a landout, too bad. The scoresheet should reflect that you decided to terminate soaring flight at that point..

Also remember that virtually ALL external power sources (Reciprocating engine, Turbine or Electric CAN fail. And the insidious "Emergency Algorithm" dictates that it will most probably fail at the absolutely WORST time, i.e.., too low over bad terrain when you have not previously selected an appropriate landing area and planned how to get in to it safely.

An auxiliary power source is a neat thing to have. Just remember that it is NOT a "Safety" device. It is best if you just treat it as a way to avoid inconvenience. Betting on it to save your sorry butt in a competition (or on any flight) is just asking for trouble.

I don't think the allowed use of a motor in competition without precipitating a mandator handout doesn't anything to change the fact that a motor is not a safety device. At the same time, I don't think in an event where every glider is equipped with electric propulsion it is necessarily mandatory anymore to treat motor use as a mandatory landout. That's the point that people seem to be missing. It's a new form of the sport, one where you aren't knocked out of the contest if you miss a critical climb.

That seems worth looking at.

9B

On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 9:18:45 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 6:39:40 PM UTC-8, wrote:
If this is "soaring," then no external power or induced thrust should be allowed. Start the engine, turn a prop (or turbine, or compressed air jet, or stick an oar out the window or whatever) and you are now a powered aircraft. In competition, the flight STOPS THERE. (Just like the OLC.) No exceptions. If you elect to augment your flight to make it home when getting too low for comfort and do not want to accept a landout, too bad. The scoresheet should reflect that you decided to terminate soaring flight at that point.