SENIORS CONTEST

OK, I've been lurking on this topic long enough.

I regullarly make low-pass finnish at the end of the majority of my
soaring flights, and know when and where to expect other aircraft in
the traffic pattern. I plan and adjust my actions acrodingly. In
addition to my experience flying gliders I also have over 600 hours of
instruction given in the Southern California airspace (flying powered
aircraft), along with over 500 hours of flying a Beech Bonanza
corporatly into the majority of class Bravo airports through out the
country. With all of my experiences the closest that I have come to
being in a mid-air is not finnishing at the gliderport, but flying VFR
traffic patterns with students at untowered fields. This is by far the
closest resemblience to a finish cylinder that the majority of pilots
encounter during their flying carrier. Even though there are
recomended procedures to enter a VFR pattern pilots will choose to
otherwise depending on their situation. Conversely, flying an ILS
approach most closely resembles a finish gate senario: all the traffic
is flying the same direction, for the same destination (how i miss
AST's). When a pilot reports the final approach fix on an ILS (or for
any instrument appraoch) you know exactly where he is at, the same
holds true for finnish gate procedures with a common final turnpoint,
four miles is going to be four miles! My concern has never been that I
am going to climb into someone (or that some one is going to climb into
me), but that we are going to converge on each other. The only mid-air
collision that I have personal knowledge of, that occured in the
traffic pattern, happend when two of my colleuges were turning from
cross-wind to down-wind, in a Duchess, when a Mooney struck them after
making an improper postion report, and this was at a towered field!
(See http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...27X05234&key=2 NTSB
Report:LAX02FA288B)

SO.... I contend that the finish cylinder is not going to provide
safety at a contest. I conceed that there are locations where a finish
cylinder does provide a better finishing enviroment, considering other
airport operations. Ideally by providing an established finishing
routine (I like the ideas of mandatory final turns) we as pilots can
provide better position reports facilitating our communications with
each other over the radio - the best tool that we have to avoid
mid-airs and make the finish area (gate or otherwise) a safer
environment.


Orion Kingman
DV8
Phoenix

At 02:30 17 March 2005, Kilo Charlie wrote:
OK you math guys.....help me out with some
numbers....you out there 9B?!


Go get 'em Casey - grrrr...

...I'm covering the Neanderthal thread. Check it out,
I just folded the 15-minute rule into the discussion
- it'll be hypergolic!

(BTW, I'm inclined to agree with you - for years I
knew where to look when someone called 'four miles'
or got a 'mark' on finishing - now I still look but
odd's are I won't see anyone - particularly on MATs,
so on I go in the blind.

I remember Marine ground attack pilots telling me about
dropping bombs on targets at the same time as incoming
artillery. They called it 'big sky, little bullet'
- this seems like the same doctrine. If the cylinder
is big enough the odds are reduced than any two random
gliders will run into each other, but the price you
pay is making it harder to see and avoid each other
if you do end up on converging courses. Hard to prove
the math of it - too many possible combinations.)

9B

Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

OK Devil's advocate stuff...

At least on a 50' finish you can be reasonably sure there is no glider below you
in your blind spot. When you are that low the only thing beneath you is ground,
and presumably you have good situational awareness relating to where it is going
;-)Effectively you remove one degre of freedom from your conflicting traffic
equation. Also - everyone knows what your intentions are, the moment you cross
the line. Not least important is the psychological effect of - "any stupidity
now is going to be in clear view" - one assumes this tends to focus the mind a
little.

With a higher / further finish you open up the options a little.

Actually, 50 ft is not particularily high... :-)

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Bruce" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

OK Devil's advocate stuff...

At least on a 50' finish you can be reasonably sure there is no glider
below you in your blind spot. When you are that low the only thing beneath
you is ground, and presumably you have good situational awareness relating
to where it is going ;-)Effectively you remove one degre of freedom from
your conflicting traffic equation. Also - everyone knows what your
intentions are, the moment you cross the line. Not least important is the
psychological effect of - "any stupidity now is going to be in clear
view" - one assumes this tends to focus the mind a little.

With a higher / further finish you open up the options a little.

Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

Any time you divide a group at some breakpoint (like 55 years of age), the
means will be different; if there are more than a few on each side, they
are likely to be statistically significantly different from each other as
well.

For the Choice Reaction-time "contest" at the convention, the contestants
were fairly evenly divided with 101 competitors in the 55 class and 88 in
the seniors. The mean ages were 66.26 vs. 42.59 (p0.000). If you drop the
"juniors" (age26), you raise the mean for the 55 class to 45.44.

The usual disclaimers, of course, apply.

Ray Warshaw
1LK


"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

I don't understand the talk about "conflicts" in the finish cylinder.
Everybody is inbound on a radial, heading for the center of the
cylinder, when you reach 1 mile, your clock stops. Where is the
conflict? Lots of sky out there, 5280 X 3.1416 X 2 = 33,175 feet around
it, each radial = 91 feet at 1 mile. There is no "head-on" conflict,
because the guy coming at you is on the other side of the cylinder
which is 2 miles away. And we don't have my favorite little jewel,
"hooking the gate".
Let me take a crack at the numbers; The finish line is 1000 meters
(3281 feet), but we don't use all of it because we aim for the closest
corner, when straight on, we center punch it at the GPS coordinates. So
lets divide the finish line by 8 to get 410 feet which I will call the
target area (area where a conflict might happen).
The finish cylinder circumference is 33,175, but lets take the worst
case where everybody is coming from the same turn point and divide it
by the same factor of 8 to give us the distance in the 45 degree hunk
of pie we're all headed for. That's 4147feet and almost exactly 10
times more distance in the cylinder target area as in the finish line
target area. I'm going to say there is 10 times more chance of a
conflict at the finish line than there is at the finish cylinder
JJ

Err, okay...so does that mean they are actually an
older group at the seniors? I don't see to many spring-chickens
in the 15-Standard-Open Classes.



At 00:00 18 March 2005, Raphael Warshaw wrote:
Any time you divide a group at some breakpoint (like
55 years of age), the
means will be different; if there are more than a
few on each side, they
are likely to be statistically significantly different
from each other as
well.

For the Choice Reaction-time 'contest' at the convention,
the contestants
were fairly evenly divided with 101 competitors in
the 0.000). If you drop the
'juniors' (age wrote in
message ...
Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs
a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'