Canadians Abandon 1000-point Scoring

Simple and elegant.
Could we add 15 minutes to everyone's time?

running, ducking and grinning.....

"Bill Feldbaumer" wrote in message
m...
The Canadians have been experimenting with a new scoring system for
soaring contests. They will abandon 1000-point scoring with all its
inaccuracies and complexities in 2004. Scoring will be based on
distance with the exclusive use of the Time Distance Task.

snip
With the TDT, the CD specifies a flight time, 3 hours, for example.
Some number of mandatory turnpoints is specified. Pilots are free to
choose their own turnpoints after that. The CD could also specify a
radius around the turnpoints, as is done with the Turn Area Task.

The distance achieved by each pilot three hours after his start time
is his score. A pilot may be in the air, at the home airport, or have
landed out when his time is up. Land outs are scored the same as
finishers, by distance; no arbitrary factors are needed. A bonus is
given for landing at the home airport.

The cumulative scores are simply the sum of the daily distances. The
champion is the pilot with the greatest distance for the entire
contest. Because the total flight time is a fixed number for the
entire contest, the champion also has the highest speed for the total
contest. This is, of course, how champions are chosen in other racing
sports worldwide.

snip

It might be simple and elegant but, like the other
new type tasks, what it scores certainly isn't a race
as the term is understood by the rest of the world
who aren't glider pilots.

John Galloway



At 20:18 23 September 2003, 303pilot wrote:
Simple and elegant.
Could we add 15 minutes to everyone's time?



'Bill Feldbaumer' wrote in message
om...
The Canadians have been experimenting with a new scoring
system for
soaring contests. They will abandon 1000-point scoring
with all its
inaccuracies and complexities in 2004. Scoring will
be based on
distance with the exclusive use of the Time Distance
Task.

snip
With the TDT, the CD specifies a flight time, 3 hours,
for example.
Some number of mandatory turnpoints is specified.
Pilots are free to
choose their own turnpoints after that. The CD could
also specify a
radius around the turnpoints, as is done with the
Turn Area Task.

The distance achieved by each pilot three hours after
his start time
is his score. A pilot may be in the air, at the home
airport, or have
landed out when his time is up. Land outs are scored
the same as
finishers, by distance; no arbitrary factors are needed.
A bonus is
given for landing at the home airport.

The cumulative scores are simply the sum of the daily
distances. The
champion is the pilot with the greatest distance for
the entire
contest. Because the total flight time is a fixed
number for the
entire contest, the champion also has the highest
speed for the total
contest. This is, of course, how champions are chosen
in other racing
sports worldwide.

snip

Bill Feldbaumer wrote:

the Time Distance Task (TDT) has been approved by the
International Gliding Commission for use in competitions.

In fact there is no more TDT in IGC rules (see version 2002 of Annex A)
- it's now called "Distance task" - but there *is* in the Annex A, of
course, the possibility to choose the kilometer scoring system instead
of 1000 pts.


Joerg Stieber wrote:

There is one disadvantage:

* For an optimized flight, the pilot has to have converted as much
energy as possible into distance at time-out. This leads to pilots
timing out low in the vicinity of the contest site (to take advantage
of the 10% home bonus) and wobbling with minimal energy over the
fence. (Karl Striedeck was quick to point this out). We are looking at
solutions, i.e. reduction of the home bonus to 5% for arrivals under
500 ft, timing-out as soon a pilots descend below 1000 ft agl (or an
equivalent pre-defined MSL altitude) before finishing.

In the Annex A there is already a possibility to avoid such a problem,
by setting a minimum "finish" MSL altitude (minimum altitude at time-out
- if a pilot happen to be lower than this altitude, only his last fix
above it counts).

And there is also a option to give a malus (20% of distance) to pilots
who don't fly back home after the time-out - this is another incentive
not to "finish" too low at time-out.

I'm happy to see that such a system has been used with success in
nationals. I see two main advantages to the distance scoring, by respect
to the 1000 points system :

- it gives more importance to longer tasks, which are usually with the
best weather, and less importance to the shorter, in the poor weather,
where luck is more important

- it enhances the fact that gliders flew long distances (for the public
or media)

--
Denis
Private replies: remove "moncourrielest" from my e-mail address
Pour me répondre utiliser l'adresse courriel figurant après
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(Bill Feldbaumer) wrote in message
....

There is one disadvantage:

* For an optimized flight, the pilot has to have converted as much
energy as possible into distance at time-out. This leads to pilots
timing out low in the vicinity of the contest site (to take advantage
of the 10% home bonus) and wobbling with minimal energy over the
fence. (Karl Striedeck was quick to point this out). We are looking at
solutions, i.e. reduction of the home bonus to 5% for arrivals under
500 ft, timing-out as soon a pilots descend below 1000 ft agl (or an
equivalent pre-defined MSL altitude) before finishing.


Minor disadvantage or fatal flaw? Actually, the optimal flight ends at
minimum altitude as far downwind of the contest site as you dare.
Then, scratch back home, arriving just as the sun goes down. (Not just
opinion here, but reports from the last club class worlds.) The
contest becomes a crapshoot about whether you pull this off or not.
The min altitude doesn't really help; even a save from 1000' 30 miles
downwind late in the day is a chancy proposition, but a
contest-winning strategy. Then, there's the question, just how much
wind does it take before it's advantageous to go straight downind and
ignore the bonus points? More math problems, and a great task for
motorgliders!

The basic total distance scoring would be very attractive, if only
giders didn't land out every now and then. For now, no one has solved
this basic flaw in the system.

John Cochrane

John

As a Canadian, forced to fly using this flawed system for the last two
Canadian Nationals I have flown, I couldn't agree with you more. On a
less extreme side (and more typical of the systems mass mentality for
those who chose not to chance having to thermal from low altitude to
get home after timeout) here are some other flaws:

1. The optimum finish, assuming you make it home before the timeout,
is to head off to a few close in turnpoints and plan it so that you
are on course line, at 0 MaCready for home airport, at timeout. This
is extremely UNSAFE. It leads to many finishers coming back to the
home airport from a low energy final glide from all directions. I
remember a day at Rockton were we had about 4 gliders finish without a
circuit from four directions.

2. To solution proposed for the flaw of many finishers from many
directions at low energy, was simply to try to force everyone to
timeout before they got back to the home area (I guess then you only
have a lot of low energy finishes from the same direction). The
winners, in this case, were the ones who got the closest to home at
timeout which required the least altitude to make it home at 0
MaCready. The other poor folk were almost penalised by having to have
the extra altitude (at least 1300 feet per 10 miles they were behind)
to make it home from timeout. What actually happened was that, in
almost every case after this solution was proposed, (due to difficult
task planning requirements of this) the winners made it home before
timeout anyway.

There are other flaws but, as you can see I am not a proponent of this
system.

Dale Kramer
K1




Minor disadvantage or fatal flaw? Actually, the optimal flight ends at
minimum altitude as far downwind of the contest site as you dare.
Then, scratch back home, arriving just as the sun goes down. (Not just
opinion here, but reports from the last club class worlds.) The
contest becomes a crapshoot about whether you pull this off or not.
The min altitude doesn't really help; even a save from 1000' 30 miles
downwind late in the day is a chancy proposition, but a
contest-winning strategy. Then, there's the question, just how much
wind does it take before it's advantageous to go straight downind and
ignore the bonus points? More math problems, and a great task for
motorgliders!

The basic total distance scoring would be very attractive, if only
giders didn't land out every now and then. For now, no one has solved
this basic flaw in the system.

John Cochrane

Regarding the new Canadian scoring/tasking system:

So far we've heard praise based on theory, objections based on
theory, and objections based on experience. The only thing
that's missing is praise based on experience.

Is there anyone out there who has been scored using this system
and who likes it?

Pat Russell wrote:

Regarding the new Canadian scoring/tasking system:

So far we've heard praise based on theory, objections based on
theory, and objections based on experience. The only thing
that's missing is praise based on experience.

Is there anyone out there who has been scored using this system
and who likes it?

You're mixing two different issues :

- the tasking system - use of distance tasks : ALL objections in this
thread were about tasks, or more eactly task setting (because there were
better ways to solve the issue of low finishes, such as setting a
minimum altitude). Task setting raise a lot of objections too in usual
racing tasks !

- the scoring system - use of distance scoring, which consist to score
not on 1000 points, but on the maximum distance flown - if I refer to
the title of this thread, this is what we should be speaking about ;-)

Of course the distance scoring is better suited to tasks in a designated
time (either "distance" or "speed" tasks in IGC Annex A terminology),
but it may also be used for Racing tasks.

And Distance tasks are been widely used, including in Worlds, with the
1000 points system and the same potential inconvenients that have been
discussed in this thread - plus one : the minimum finish altitude is a
good solution in areas where you find few outlanding areas but high
cloudbases ; it's a bad choice if set too high in areas with good fieds
everywhere but poor weather when you are barely able to fly above the
minimum altitude !

--
Denis
Private replies: remove "moncourrielest" from my e-mail address
Pour me répondre utiliser l'adresse courriel figurant après
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tango4 wrote:

That's simply a non starter. Lets say you space the starts at 2 minute
intervals, in a field of 40 the last guy to start has 39 thermal markers
ahead of him. The first starter is 120km away on a medium competirion day.
Even I could gain 20 places given those conditions. Gaggling or more
precisely leeching has been the subject of many threads here and, I've no
doubt, at IGC meetings and around every club bar. We haven't found a
solution yet!

except if the start is in the order of the overall standings (first
first) and if the order at the finish line determines the new overall
ranking...

no leching, easy to understand for the public, and suspense up to the
last day guaranteed !

--
Denis
Private replies: remove "moncourrielest" from my e-mail address
Pour me répondre utiliser l'adresse courriel figurant après
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