Does USA need a Club Class?

Stewart Kissel wrote:
But then I fall into the category of non-racer making
suggestions for something I don't participate in....so
I will refrain from further ideas....

Of course, the key to keeping all racing viable sport in US, is to make
sure that we don't end up with a bunch of classes (or rules) that end up
killing any interest amongst those pilots who haven't tried racing. So
I, for one (a "semi-racer", as I only do one or two contests per year),
think the ideas that you and other "non-racers" (even M B ;^) come up
with are every bit as valuable as those from "racers"...

Marc

Stewart Kissel wrote:
OOOHHH...I think you may be onto something here JJ...

A class for ras posters only? Or maybe Kennedy assassination
conspiracy believers? Lots of possibilities....

In response to the other parallel thread....my last
post may have been unclear...I am not suggesting more
entries allowed per contest...rather races being set
up for the most contestants...ie a 50 contestant National
Club Class vs a 15 contestant Open Class Nat...

It may not be as poor a use of resources at it first seems, because
low-participation classes like Open Class Nationals are usually run
concurrently with another class; for example, this year the Open Class
Nationals will overlap the Region 8 regional contest, so the same
towplanes, facilities, contest director, etc., are used.

Way in the past, I suggested we have handicapping similar to what is now
the Club Class, but use it for the Standard and 15 meter classes so
older gliders (within, say, 10% of the newest and best) would still be
competitive. Not much interest at the time!

While I like the Club Class concept, I suspect having one would not
increase the contest participation, but would reduce the Sports Class
participation as some pilots shifted to the Club Class. It would be a
great survey question, I think!


But then I fall into the category of non-racer making
suggestions for something I don't participate in....so
I will refrain from further ideas....

In the '80s, when I was an SSA director, I thought it was a weakness of
our contest system that it did seek out the opinions of those that WERE
NOT racing. It is still a weakness. I hope that a way will be found to
include people that might become racers so their opinions can also help
guide the rules committee. In other words, make increasing participation
a goal of the rules, not just pleasing the pilots ALREADY racing.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

The Club Class and 2-seater class works in europe because
there is a
bunch of those ships available (from the neumerous
clubs) In the US our
ships are 98% privately owned and one can enter sports
class where you
can 'fly what you brung'.
JJ

I think that the term 'Club Class' is slightly misleading.
Certainly in the UK the vast majority of 'club class'
competing gliders are not club owned. I would say that
in the UK Club Class Nationals 85-90% of the gliders
are privately owned (if not more). Thus, it is not
popular in Europe because there are no private owners.
I rather think that it is popular because it allows
people to get into a class which can be competed in
at World level for a fraction of the cost of new gliders.


As for whether the US needs a club class, I suspect
the sports class satisfies most of the objectives.


Owain

I recommended that the CH handicaps simply
be squared for Sports class.

The PW-2 with 2.15 becomes 4.62
The Nimbus 3DM with .75 becomes .56

1-26 1.62 2.62
2-33 1.84 3.38
L-13 1.46 2.13
G103 1.15 1.32
ASW20 0.90 0.81

So the Nimbus would need to go 8.2 times faster (or
further or whatever) to beat the PW-2 driver.

This would favor the lower performance ships. Really,
isn't the importance of Sports Class to make it distinct?
I think squaring the handicap would make it much more
insteresting and distinct.

And the PW-2 guy doing a 30km task vs. the Nimbus guy
with
a 250km task sounds like a real race to me!

And a 2-33 vs an ASW-20 SHOULD get about a 4:1 advantage,
instead of a 2:1 advantage.

I'd like to see this scoring at our fun meet coming
up...

As far as the other classes, I'm not sure how the
'standard' class has lived so long. Also, every contest
seems to be a 'seniors' contest anyway, so dunno about
that
one :P

A 2-place contest class? Sports and open-unlimited
should be enough for this.

Finally, who cares about motorglider class? For the
flying portion of the contest, isn't it just the 'fixed
ballast' class?
These guys say 'it's just a glider' so I'd like to
see it just treated that way. I'm aware of the subtlety
of 'landouts' but I
think there is an elegant way to even the playing field
for this
(some penalty for landout, doubled for engine use).

So those are four I'm not so sure about.

Sports, 15 meter, and open-unlimited seem to be the
three
real viable ones. With the squared handicap, lowest
performers
will tend to Sports, the tilters and flappers that
qualify will
go 15-meter, and the sexy big glass in open.

I think every successful multiclass contest has at
least two of these three classes, right? The rest
seem to be very 'specialty' classes. Nothing wrong
with that, except it gets a little harder to get throngs
motivated for so many 'class' competitions

At 17:00 04 April 2005, wrote:

Tim Mara wrote:
we don't need another class...we just need to fix
the one we
have.....

I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class
'more or less'
to the
very successful European Club Class (they actually
have two versions
there
for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called
the 'racing
class)
My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders
from the Sports
class
that already had a 'competitive' class of their own....
Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow'
any 'current

production' competition glider or variation thereof,
from Sports
class
competition.
Meaning..if you have a 'racing' glider that is of
a series currently
being
produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class
it was designed
for
(15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you
have a glider
that has
been surpassed by more competitive models from the
manufacturer,then
it
could be handicapped and allowed into sports class...
The main idea
with
this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older
gliders (lower
cost)
to fly with their pilots competitively and let them
fly in called
tasks
rather than having to design new scoring systems to
meet the broadest
array
of handicaps.
The other change to sports class I suggested was that
no one would be

allowed to fly in a sports class 'National' contest,
that had not
participated in a Sports class regional contest within
the preceding
3
years, thus keeping the class 'pure' .....since it
seems pilots who
otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to
rush top attend
only when
there is a title at stake....and then of course as
we see it today,
show up
in droves to fly their latest ship...
I never got any flack from these proposals except
of course from
those who
were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but
even most
of them
admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting
the sports
class
and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older
gliders a place
to
compete where they could more or less evenly match
themselves and
their
ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which
can't be
bad for
any of us...
anyway.my 2c are there again.....
tim

--
Wings & Wheels
www.wingsandwheels.com


Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you
going to draw the
line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines.
How about the
Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal
to only allow
real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't
be all that hard to
log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones
options open.
What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports
nats when they are
close and the other nationals when they are close.
That's what I do and
kind-a like it that way.

JJ


Mark J. Boyd

the problem with this handicapping is that you still have PW5's and Nimbus's
in the same class......you can never properly handicap such a
field......and, there already is a class for the PW5 (World class) and one
for the Nimbus (Open class) and 126's have their own class too.....
a small restriction to who can fly what will go a long way towards allowing
everyone to fly a 100K, 200K or 300K on the same day....and, like the FAI
classes, even see another glider during the day. Not simply fly alone and to
wherever and have no clue how they are doing, or learn by following others
of "like" performance
tim
"M B" wrote in message
...
I recommended that the CH handicaps simply
be squared for Sports class.

The PW-2 with 2.15 becomes 4.62
The Nimbus 3DM with .75 becomes .56

1-26 1.62 2.62
2-33 1.84 3.38
L-13 1.46 2.13
G103 1.15 1.32
ASW20 0.90 0.81

So the Nimbus would need to go 8.2 times faster (or
further or whatever) to beat the PW-2 driver.

This would favor the lower performance ships. Really,
isn't the importance of Sports Class to make it distinct?
I think squaring the handicap would make it much more
insteresting and distinct.

And the PW-2 guy doing a 30km task vs. the Nimbus guy
with
a 250km task sounds like a real race to me!

And a 2-33 vs an ASW-20 SHOULD get about a 4:1 advantage,
instead of a 2:1 advantage.

I'd like to see this scoring at our fun meet coming
up...

As far as the other classes, I'm not sure how the
'standard' class has lived so long. Also, every contest
seems to be a 'seniors' contest anyway, so dunno about
that
one :P

A 2-place contest class? Sports and open-unlimited
should be enough for this.

Finally, who cares about motorglider class? For the
flying portion of the contest, isn't it just the 'fixed
ballast' class?
These guys say 'it's just a glider' so I'd like to
see it just treated that way. I'm aware of the subtlety
of 'landouts' but I
think there is an elegant way to even the playing field
for this
(some penalty for landout, doubled for engine use).

So those are four I'm not so sure about.

Sports, 15 meter, and open-unlimited seem to be the
three
real viable ones. With the squared handicap, lowest
performers
will tend to Sports, the tilters and flappers that
qualify will
go 15-meter, and the sexy big glass in open.

I think every successful multiclass contest has at
least two of these three classes, right? The rest
seem to be very 'specialty' classes. Nothing wrong
with that, except it gets a little harder to get throngs
motivated for so many 'class' competitions

At 17:00 04 April 2005, wrote:

Tim Mara wrote:
we don't need another class...we just need to fix
the one we
have.....

I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class
'more or less'
to the
very successful European Club Class (they actually
have two versions
there
for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called
the 'racing
class)
My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders
from the Sports
class
that already had a 'competitive' class of their own....
Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow'
any 'current

production' competition glider or variation thereof,
from Sports
class
competition.
Meaning..if you have a 'racing' glider that is of
a series currently
being
produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class
it was designed
for
(15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you
have a glider
that has
been surpassed by more competitive models from the
manufacturer,then
it
could be handicapped and allowed into sports class...
The main idea
with
this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older
gliders (lower
cost)
to fly with their pilots competitively and let them
fly in called
tasks
rather than having to design new scoring systems to
meet the broadest
array
of handicaps.
The other change to sports class I suggested was that
no one would be

allowed to fly in a sports class 'National' contest,
that had not
participated in a Sports class regional contest within
the preceding
3
years, thus keeping the class 'pure' .....since it
seems pilots who
otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to
rush top attend
only when
there is a title at stake....and then of course as
we see it today,
show up
in droves to fly their latest ship...
I never got any flack from these proposals except
of course from
those who
were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but
even most
of them
admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting
the sports
class
and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older
gliders a place
to
compete where they could more or less evenly match
themselves and
their
ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which
can't be
bad for
any of us...
anyway.my 2c are there again.....
tim

--
Wings & Wheels
www.wingsandwheels.com


Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you
going to draw the
line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines.
How about the
Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal
to only allow
real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't
be all that hard to
log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones
options open.
What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports
nats when they are
close and the other nationals when they are close.
That's what I do and
kind-a like it that way.

JJ


Mark J. Boyd

At 02:30 05 April 2005, wrote:
Just checked the entry list for Parowan, Tim's idea
would eliminate 50
pilots out of the 74 that wish to fly the sports nationals
this year.
Is this what we want?

I've been waiting for this moment...

I agree with JJ.

The last thing we need is a set of rules changes that
up the odds of contests being under-subscribed (and
uneconomic to run).

If we are worried about new pilots being excluded from
popular Regionals, or being crushed by better pilots
who are 'down-classing', we could consider doing reverse
seeding for entry in sports class for Regionals (as
was done at Parowan last year), and maybe even parallel
scoring based on an additional handicap tied to each
pilot's seeding (like golf).

9B

If your premise is 'you can never properly handicap
such
a field' then you needn't say any more. No handicap
system will satisfy you.

Personally, I like the handicapping system, but think
it doesn't give enough distinction to discourage those
flying higher performance aircraft. I don't see 2-33s
or L-13s or PW-2s entered in the Sports Class. They
have no class to compete in, because the handicaps
need to be further apart.

If we want to see newbies REALLY encouraged to race,
we should REALLY encourage low performance aircraft.
Something you can just barely do a silver badge in
comfortably...

The only reason the 15meter, 18meter, standard and
world class guys don't win Sports class instead is
pride.
If you cancelled all the other classes at the last
second at some contest, the Nimbus would top the Sport's
class leader board...

At 23:00 04 April 2005, Tim Mara wrote:
the problem with this handicapping is that you still
have PW5's and Nimbus's
in the same class......you can never properly handicap
such a
field......and, there already is a class for the PW5
(World class) and one
for the Nimbus (Open class) and 126's have their own
class too.....
a small restriction to who can fly what will go a long
way towards allowing
everyone to fly a 100K, 200K or 300K on the same day....and,
like the FAI
classes, even see another glider during the day. Not
simply fly alone and to
wherever and have no clue how they are doing, or learn
by following others
of 'like' performance
tim
'M B' wrote in message
...
I recommended that the CH handicaps simply
be squared for Sports class.

The PW-2 with 2.15 becomes 4.62
The Nimbus 3DM with .75 becomes .56

1-26 1.62 2.62
2-33 1.84 3.38
L-13 1.46 2.13
G103 1.15 1.32
ASW20 0.90 0.81

So the Nimbus would need to go 8.2 times faster (or
further or whatever) to beat the PW-2 driver.

This would favor the lower performance ships. Really,
isn't the importance of Sports Class to make it distinct?
I think squaring the handicap would make it much more
insteresting and distinct.

And the PW-2 guy doing a 30km task vs. the Nimbus
guy
with
a 250km task sounds like a real race to me!

And a 2-33 vs an ASW-20 SHOULD get about a 4:1 advantage,
instead of a 2:1 advantage.

I'd like to see this scoring at our fun meet coming
up...

As far as the other classes, I'm not sure how the
'standard' class has lived so long. Also, every contest
seems to be a 'seniors' contest anyway, so dunno about
that
one :P

A 2-place contest class? Sports and open-unlimited
should be enough for this.

Finally, who cares about motorglider class? For the
flying portion of the contest, isn't it just the 'fixed
ballast' class?
These guys say 'it's just a glider' so I'd like to
see it just treated that way. I'm aware of the subtlety
of 'landouts' but I
think there is an elegant way to even the playing
field
for this
(some penalty for landout, doubled for engine use).

So those are four I'm not so sure about.

Sports, 15 meter, and open-unlimited seem to be the
three
real viable ones. With the squared handicap, lowest
performers
will tend to Sports, the tilters and flappers that
qualify will
go 15-meter, and the sexy big glass in open.

I think every successful multiclass contest has at
least two of these three classes, right? The rest
seem to be very 'specialty' classes. Nothing wrong
with that, except it gets a little harder to get throngs
motivated for so many 'class' competitions

At 17:00 04 April 2005, wrote:

Tim Mara wrote:
we don't need another class...we just need to fix
the one we
have.....

I proposed years ago that we modify the Sports class
'more or less'
to the
very successful European Club Class (they actually
have two versions
there
for standard class gliders and 15 meter gliders called
the 'racing
class)
My (and others) suggestion was to eliminate gliders
from the Sports
class
that already had a 'competitive' class of their own....
Doing this I suggested the sports class would 'disallow'
any 'current

production' competition glider or variation thereof,
from Sports
class
competition.
Meaning..if you have a 'racing' glider that is of
a series currently
being
produced you'd have to fly it in the respective class
it was designed
for
(15M, Standard, open and yes, world class) . If you
have a glider
that has
been surpassed by more competitive models from the
manufacturer,then
it
could be handicapped and allowed into sports class...
The main idea
with
this was to allow closer handicapping and allow older
gliders (lower
cost)
to fly with their pilots competitively and let them
fly in called
tasks
rather than having to design new scoring systems to
meet the broadest
array
of handicaps.
The other change to sports class I suggested was that
no one would be

allowed to fly in a sports class 'National' contest,
that had not
participated in a Sports class regional contest within
the preceding
3
years, thus keeping the class 'pure' .....since it
seems pilots who
otherwise snub their noses at sports class seem to
rush top attend
only when
there is a title at stake....and then of course as
we see it today,
show up
in droves to fly their latest ship...
I never got any flack from these proposals except
of course from
those who
were already fling the latest and greatest ships......but
even most
of them
admitted in the past it would be beneficial to promoting
the sports
class
and would allow owners on lesser budgets with older
gliders a place
to
compete where they could more or less evenly match
themselves and
their
ships and bring more into the sport or glider racing..which
can't be
bad for
any of us...
anyway.my 2c are there again.....
tim

--
Wings & Wheels
www.wingsandwheels.com


Can't argue with any of that, Tim, but where are you
going to draw the
line? The V1's and 20's are still quite potent machines.
How about the
Genesis, its out of production. I do like your proposal
to only allow
real sports pilots to compete, but then it wouldn't
be all that hard to
log a sports regionals every 3 years just to keep ones
options open.
What I see is a lot of local pilots will fly sports
nats when they are
close and the other nationals when they are close.
That's what I do and
kind-a like it that way.

JJ


Mark J. Boyd





Mark J. Boyd

M B wrote:


The only reason the 15meter, 18meter, standard and
world class guys don't win Sports class instead is
pride.
If you cancelled all the other classes at the last
second at some contest, the Nimbus would top the Sport's
class leader board...

According to a friend of mine who has flown his Nimbus in Sports class,
it would be a poor choice. I think he suggested an LS4 would be much
better. Since he is a good contest pilot and did win a Sports Class
Nationals in an LS4, I tend to believe him.

The handicaps do work reasonably well, in my experience, meaning the
winners are generally better pilots than the losers. There is more
"scatter" in the results, of course, because the weather is not always
uniform enough.
--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

We have a few real sports class pilots that only fly that class, but
they are definitely the minority. Those of us who are serious about
racing, have and will continue to buy the most performance we can
afford. Should we exclude the vast majority, simply because we choose
to fly newer equipment? I think, no. Parowan this year has 2/3 newer
stuff and 1/3 older stuff. I say, leave it alone.

Oh, one more thing, the numbers have been scrubbed down for over 30
years, now. They're not perfect, but they represent the best that can
be done. Truth is, the open class ship can't win unless nobody else
makes it home. The 1-26 can't fight any wind over 10 knots. Guess what?
these two extremes don't come any more.
JJ

A lot of good points have been stated in this thread.
I'm sure I can't add any good points, but I can add
my 2 cents worth...

I've flown in one SSA Regional contest, a couple of
GTA (Georgia-Tennessee-Alabama series) and some 'fun
flys' that were sort of run like contests. In all
cases, I was in a 'sports class' and I think the GTA
runs their series based on the sports class rules.

I know I don't have a chance of winning. Yet. But
I want to go to contests to:
1. Improve my flying
2. Meet other people
3. Have a great vacation

The main problem holding me back: Lack of vacation
time. A regional requires more than a week of vacation
time and since I'm on a new job, it takes time to build
sufficient vacation time. Here is where the GTA series
is great: They fly weekend events with the occassional
3-day fling thrown in. Unfortunately, their races
nearest to me are about 500 miles away. That's just
an awfully long way to go, especially with gas over
$2.20/gallon, for two days of flying. (I know the
Europeans are rolling their eyes over this item.)

I am a bit intimidated when I find a lot of newer gliders
as compared to my 1970 LS1-d at these events. Sure,
there may be the occassional Libelle or 1-34, but most
of the competition I've seen at the events have been
newer than mine.

While it is a little intimidating, I'm not put off
by it. I know that is just the way it is. And besides,
it gives me a good alibi for loosing! (Handicap for
my glider is 1.019)

But I must say, it would be more interesting if all
the competitors in my class had gliders of similar
vintage (or even street value?)

Back to the GTA: They run two classes: The 'A' class
for the experienced pilots and the 'B' class for the
rest. For the two events I attended, I flew in the
'B' class. They assign shorter tasks for the 'B' pilots
and usually the route stays a little closer to the
home field. To me, these are appealing features.
It lets me fly 'in the shallow part of the pool' before
I 'jump off into the deep end.'

So, I could see where a Club Class would be interesting
and I would participate, if I can ever build enough
vacation time. But, I'll be happy in the Sports Class
just the way it is. That's because I'm not a 'real'
competitor like EY. He and others like him are out
to win. I'm just out to have a good time. And having
the structure available at a contest: The CD, the
weather guesser, and all the other pilots doing the
same thing make flying a contest a whole lot more fun
and interesting than flying at the home field where
everybody seems to do their own thing.

So, I just need more vacation time and a longer spring
season.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
LS1-d, 'W8'