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SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty



 
 
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  #21  
Old January 1st 18, 07:39 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

Andy, you ought to know it is never the opinion of the majority of pilots that counts. I have seen it for years being the opinion of the committees that always matters and the rest of us just end up having to live with whatever they decide. It happens in soaring and it happens in every race or club association.
  #22  
Old January 1st 18, 08:03 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

Andy Blackburn of the rules committee helping me on speed/distance points specifics:
We changed the ratio of speed to distance points a few years back, so the maximum penalty for a pilot who would otherwise score 1000 ought to be 400, not 600.

RWF - I should fuss with the rules formulas more often!
  #23  
Old January 1st 18, 10:42 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

It seems with such harsh penalties one is better off landing out if they are confident of getting home but arriving low.
  #24  
Old January 1st 18, 11:55 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

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.
  #25  
Old January 2nd 18, 12:04 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Ron Gleason
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

On Monday, 1 January 2018 10:12:48 UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
It'sa worthy idea. It's been discussed and some initial conversations have been had. You need to have all the infrastructure in place. Some thoughts on what needs doing.

1) Local procedures drafted and agreed to. We don't really have all that clear an idea what pilots want in the gory details. Do you really want team flying and allowance for ground crew support (long range Flarm tracking with ground-based high-gain antennae is one common example)? I'd write local procedures against that, but a significant number of pilots might want to form teams or have some ground support. Others hate the idea. There are many tens of decisions like this to be made and choices will affect pilot participation one way or the other.
2) Scoring scripts written for SeeYou to support #1. There are a few people who are able and possibly willing to support this over some reasonable time frame.
3) Scorer who knows how to use SeeYou found and recruited.
4) Unique requirements of FAI rules supported or worked around in #1.
5) Stuff you didn't anticipate because so much is new.

It's not impossible, but it's new and unfamiliar and you need to get organizers to agree to take the risk and do the work.

Lastly, you might be well advised to not spring this on pilots who already signed up for contests and scheduled their vacations.

If there were organizer support and pilots already signed up for that same contest were nearly unanimously in favor of giving it a go, it might be possible to do it under waiver. Some informal outreach has not yielded results to my knowledge, but if organizers, pilots and other supporting volunteers got seriously motivated to do it, I for one would be favorably inclined on the request.

Andy Blackburn
9B


For #2 why not get a hold of the Scripts used at the 2012 Worlds held in Uvalde? They worked fine there, I was one of the scorers. QT may have them
  #26  
Old January 2nd 18, 12:25 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 4:42:22 PM UTC-5, wrote:
It seems with such harsh penalties one is better off landing out if they are confident of getting home but arriving low.



Kevin?
You have framed the problem here. The current rules conflate a safety issue and a fairness issue and often have unexpected consequences. Frequently the contest site sets a really high finish for good operational reasons. We had a 1400ft one mile finish at one contest. In this case, you got landed out if you finished at 1150ft over the airport! Clearly not a safety issue when they had about 5 power movements each afternoon. If the finish height had been at 400ft then a 150ft finish, other than along the runway, it could be argued to have been unsafe.

Having a linear finish penalty of about twice the points needed to gain the height makes sense and then addressing foolish unsafe finishes as unsafe flying keeps everything fair. The FAI rules use 1 point/m as the penalty and the 200ft SSA penalty is similar at 25 points/100ft. I struggle to see anyone objecting to a 300+ point penalty for someone finishing between the hangars. In FAI contests the unsafe flying penalty is often applied for strange behavior.

Bob Fletcher 90
  #27  
Old January 2nd 18, 01:03 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Andy Blackburn[_3_]
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 3:04:25 PM UTC-8, Ron Gleason wrote:

For #2 why not get a hold of the Scripts used at the 2012 Worlds held in Uvalde? They worked fine there, I was one of the scorers. QT may have them


It occurred to me. I don't know what's in it. WGC flying is a bit different from Regional flying - teams, ground crews, FAI marshals. Those aren't script items, but I don't know it there's anything in the scripts you'd want to alter for non-WGC flying and less experienced pilots. It would need a look - assuming that an organizer wanted to raise their had to host. I wager they'd need help getting everything done.

Andy
  #28  
Old January 2nd 18, 01:15 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

If the penalty does not scale to the day on a devalued day you could finish the task, arrive low, and have less points then you started the day with. The point penalty vs climb penalty only works if you have a climb to take. We all screw up final glides and if there is no climb to take the prudent thing to do us land out under the point penalty rule as proposed. On a tough day the landout might also help devalue the day further limiting the hit of a landout. You can also miss the finish line and land with an airport bonus which might be tactically prudent but not safe. Penalties like the point scenario are intended to incentivize safety (promoting safety is always worth going after)but very often unintentionally encourage unsafe flying.
  #29  
Old January 2nd 18, 01:25 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

As Kev aptly described, it seems like the rules scema actually defeats its proported purpose of enhancing safety. This keeps up the contests become more a "contest" of who can "gam" the rules structure, more than a test of soaring skill.
  #30  
Old January 2nd 18, 01:57 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Andy Blackburn[_3_]
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Default SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 4:25:28 PM UTC-8, wrote:
As Kev aptly described, it seems like the rules scema actually defeats its proported purpose of enhancing safety. This keeps up the contests become more a "contest" of who can "gam" the rules structure, more than a test of soaring skill.


Nope. Here's the proposed wording. You always get at least as many points as a landout at the cylinder edge. On a devalued day you could reach that many points at higher than 400', but you'd not generally be able to figure that out while flying and it would still be in your interest to finish, unless you can't make the airport.

10.9.2.5.1 When the Finish Height Difference is not greater than 400 feet, the pilot is eligible for a finish time, at the cylinder entry time.
10.9.2.5.2 When the Finish Height Difference is greater than zero and less than or equal to 400 feet, a penalty (¶ 12.1.3.5) applies; such penalty shall not yield a score lower than if Finish Height Difference exceeded 400'.
10.9.2.5.3 When the Finish Height Difference is greater than 400 feet, the task is incomplete. The distance of the final task leg shall be computed per ¶ 10.9.2.6.

BTW, this is the philosophy that people voted for. Of the 55% of pilots who voted to modify the finish rule (45% didn't want to change it), 54% wanted a penalty equal to a landout at a finish height from which you couldn't glide to a landing at the home airport. The RC picked 400' as that altitude for both 1 mile and 2 mile cylinders. For two miles, assuming 100' at the threshold, no need to use altitude in a turn to final and a runway at the center of the cylinder (could be better, could be a lot worse if the finish is downwind and you have to actually make a pattern), that works out to about 35:1.

That was the thinking.

Andy Blackburn
 




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