SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 2:56:02 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Too much b.s. In the name of safety or "fairness", the continued dumbing down of the skill set needed to race. Dump all the finish rules, allow guys to make a flying finish no lower than 200 ft. Or a rolling finish, no penalty. Land short and you get distance points only. Start your motor and you get distance points. Why all the intricacies? There wasn't anything wrong with how we did it 20 years ago.

I don't recall a 200' limit back in the good old days. You could scrape gelcoat off on the runway and get a good finish and pull up to buttonhook a pattern.

The only difference was then you didn't have GPS and a glide computer. My recollection was final glides had a lot more buffer on them because you were never 100% sure of your position or the winds so you generally didn't try a best L/D glide from beyond visual range to 0'. Of course glide computers offer more precision than accuracy in these situations, so you can end up in a pickle if you depend on one being that good at predicting the future.

I wrote a computer program to calculate final glides from the ground for the New Zealand Team at the 1983 WGC. The pilots would report distance and we'd estimate winds from the ground and give them height needed to get home. I didn't include any buffer and landed them both out one day a couple of miles short somewhere out in the desert west of Hobbs. Oops!

9B

I was one of the minority who voted for no change. My logic was, assuming most finish cylinders are well positioned and a minimum of 800' agl, you needed at least 600 feet agl to finish and then safely fly a pattern while merging with the existing gliders in the pattern. Below that, I felt it was unsafe flying.

If someone hits the finish cylinder at 400'agl, they will need priority in the pattern, thus creating a mess for those who are already stacked up.

It was pretty eye opening to me to be 7th of 9 in the pattern and have someone finish desperately low and need priority. Luckily, it was a nice wide runway.

Just my $0.02.

Lou

Andy, is there any objective evidence that the safety altitude finish has actually improved safety? Back in the day, we usually had many more entrants and I don’t recall any carnage with the “any where on the airport finish� and it was certainly less stressful on final glide.
Dale Bush

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 8:11:27 PM UTC-5, MNLou wrote:
I was one of the minority who voted for no change. My logic was, assuming most finish cylinders are well positioned and a minimum of 800' agl, you needed at least 600 feet agl to finish and then safely fly a pattern while merging with the existing gliders in the pattern. Below that, I felt it was unsafe flying.

If someone hits the finish cylinder at 400'agl, they will need priority in the pattern, thus creating a mess for those who are already stacked up.

It was pretty eye opening to me to be 7th of 9 in the pattern and have someone finish desperately low and need priority. Luckily, it was a nice wide runway.

Just my $0.02.

Lou

Lou, from my experience a higher finish altitude e.g. 800 AGL is actually causing traffic problems. Pilots choose different ways to lose altitude, often making unnecessary and unpredictable turns or building different patterns. Lower altitude makes everyone fly similar paterns simply because they don't have other choice, 500 feet seemed quite okay. I am sure there will be situations where higher altitude might be needed, but adopting unnecessarily high finish altitude creates problems of its own.

Lou,
In some respects we have let racing become a little too tempered here in the US, where a low finisher's pattern impact is eye-opening. In Lithuania Adam Czeladzki showed me what a finely-tuned final glide looks like as he gained a few minutes on me in the last 20 km: https://www.facebook.com/ecc.czeladz...user_video_tab

I'm not advocating for these direct landing or rolling finishes at SSA contests but it helps put into context that finishing at 600ft is perhaps some way from a "zero speed points" safety issue at gliding only locations.

Bob Fletcher 90

What was wrong with the good old days, you ask? Answer, about every other year a major accident involving low energy at the finish or crashes one or two miles from the airport. Numbers here

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...est_safety.ppt

Memories fade, don't they.

Where they still allow this stuff, the crashes go on. Szeged 2010 was particularly memorable for me because I was there. A glider on low slow final glide hit a truck driving on the airport boundary road. Last few mile crashes continue under IGC rules.

Uvalde 2017 decided to go back to the fun times of the good old days with finish line and rolling finishes allowed. Great stuff on the strong days. Then came the rain days, and only miracles saved us from a major crash. Go look at the traces. Multiple extremely low energy arrivals, including one that reportedly did a ballistic below stall speed trajectory over the final row of trees before the airport.

I love the attitude here. The task has a start gate, turnpoints, and a finish gate. The start and finish have altitude limits. If you don't make them, you haven't completed the task. Really, guys, would you go do a running race, miss the finish line, but demand to be counted because you made it to the locker room? If you miss the start gate do you demand a valid race because you took off at the same airport as everyone else? It's nice of RC to give us graduated soft penalties in the first place. IGC doesn't do that -- prepare to start whining when you miss the start, turn, or finish by one meter. Now you miss the finish line by 400 feet and that's not enough? Buck up and fly the task, and if you can't complete the task take your medicine. The task ends at the finish gate, not at the airport. Just because tasks ended at the airport 30 years ago doesn't mean they do anymore.

John Cochrane

John,
You always have great insight. However, any issues with the Uvalde finish in the rain were related to it being 4500' along a 6000' runway rather than in its middle. A few people failed to notice this until finishing and discovered lots of value in their landing flaps.

If the finish line was in the middle of the 6000' runway it's hard to see that a 10 - 500' finish height would be a problem - just land ahead.

The last Worlds I flew transitioned from the zero height finish line to a finish circle with a 200m finish at 5km, which was just fine especially with its 1 point/m low finish penalty.

My only issue with the SSA 800ft finish with its 400ft landout cut-off is the excessive penalty between 400ft and 600ft which is about equivalent to being an hour late on a racing day.

Bob Fletcher 90

John, I hear your arguments and appreciate the sentiment. But you know as well as I do that accidents do happen and will continue to happen every year no matter what new or old or innovative rules or penalties we adopt, be it high finish, low finish or no finish. Stupidity can't be regulated. If we are going to regulate/ penalize finishes to these draconian levels, why not regulate proximity within gaggles, penalize any saves below 800 ft, penalize low drag flying off the wing tip vortices of a competitor, limit task finish times to under 3 hours per day because multiple "long" days creates fatigue, the list becomes endless.

In addition, the competition degrades from a test of "soaring" skill, to one of "system/scoring management.

I don't race anymore (primarily because of issues just like the one in this thread), so I am just an interested observer. The issues should be settled completely, solely by those who are actively racing today. In addition, member of the RC should be required to race at least two regionals per year to remain on the committee, and direct polling of only the racing community should determine what U.S. racers want for their races irregardless of its affect on Worlds. The Worlds are a completely seperate issue and involve only a few guys who can train however they need to in order to be competitive there.

This is simply not true. Crashes are not inevitable. When there is a huge points advantage to clearing the fence by 10 feet and plopping it down for a rolling finish, people will do it. The crash results prove it. The high finishes have essentially cured the longstanding problems. Be clear: the issue is not low high speed finishes. The issue is the possibility, and hence the competitive necessity, to accept Mc 0 + 10 feet final glides, and the consequent last minute 1-2 mile out landings, or last minute low energy maneuvering at the airport. If the rules allow it, and you don't do it, you will lose contests.

BTW, I finished 250 feet low at Uvalde, it largely cost me the contest, and I'm not complaining. Yes it was a safe approach to the airport. But I did not make the task.

John Cochrane

Why? the task ends at 800'. 600', ok maybe that's an honest mistake. 400' low means you really did not finish this task.