Neanderthat vs. Wuss Gate

Let me tell you where I'm coming from on this gate issue. I was CD'ing
one of the Montague nationals and we were using the finish line. The
only practical location for the line was the edge of the X'ed-off
runway, but there were several competitors tied down there (read cars,
wives & kids) One of the wives complained about the low finishes coming
right over her motor home and asked if there wasn't an FAR about that?
I didn't have an answer, I still don't. As I understand the FAR's we
are not allowed to fly over people below 500 feet unless we are in the
act of landing. When we are driving in on the 50-foot gate, we are not
in the act of landing, but we are over people at Montague and the same
situation exists at Minden. If we were to move the line, say 500 feet
away from the people, we would end up with a low and slow finisher
landing in the sage brush.
God forbid, if we were to have a mid-air and the wreckage went into the
line, I guarantee you the feds would come down hard on what we are
doing.

The finish line seems to work OK at places like Hobbs, but I did have
an incident there last summer. I was driving in hard toward the 50 foot
finish line when a pilot from the other class called a rolling finish,
coming from the opposite direction. We didn't even come close, but
let's assume for the sake of discussion that we did run into each
other. One pilot is below 500 feet and in the act of landing. The other
pilot is below 500 feet and not in the act of landing. I know who's
going to lose this one, old JJ.

I have flown the finish cylinder at Reese, Parowan, Minden, Montague
and Ephrata without a hitch. Everybody pulls up, slows up, and enters
the pattern in an orderly fashion; low man goes in first. Based on my
30 years experience of using both gates and running contests, I would
estimate the finish cylinder to be on the order of 2 to 3 times safer
than the 50-foot finish line. Good management involves identifying
problems and taking corrective action, before we have an accident.
There is a better way to do this, let's bury the Neanderthal gate, once
and for all.

JJ Sinclair
PS. It's not widely known, but you don't need to make the 500 foot
minimum exactly at 1 mile. You will get a good finish anywhere inside
the cylinder, just as soon as you pull up and climb above the 500 foot
minimum. No penalty will apply, your clock just keeps running for a few
more seconds. This interpretation has been blessed by the rules
committee and the Byars scoring program works this way.

At 16:30 13 March 2005, wrote:
PS. It's not widely known, but you don't need to make
the 500 foot
minimum exactly at 1 mile. You will get a good finish
anywhere inside
the cylinder, just as soon as you pull up and climb
above the 500 foot
minimum. No penalty will apply, your clock just keeps
running for a few
more seconds. This interpretation has been blessed
by the rules
committee and the Byars scoring program works this
way.

Interesting JJ.

I checked an example to see if there's a competitive
advantage in diving for the cylinder. Let's say you
are at 900', 2 nm from the cylinder on a Mc=5 glide.
If you stay on this path you will reach the cylinder
in 75 seconds at 500'. If you choose to accelerate
to Mc=10, you will take about 60 seconds to reach the
cylinder at 50' with enough energy to pull up to 500'
with 60 knots (this includes time for the pullup).
You save 15 seconds, which is worth 1-2 points on a
2-3 hour task. Of course this leaves you a mile from
home with little airspeed or altitude since you used
what excess energy you would have had to go faster.
Goodness only knows what a pilot might do if his pullup
leaves him a bit short. According to KC one pilot ended
up spinning at low altitude - apparently trying some
similar maneuver. But it's all within the current rules
for finish cylinders.

JJ has observed more incidents with the gate - my personal
experience has seen a more issues with the cylinder.
Two examples come to mind from last year:

In one case a bunch of gliders all declared downwind
at once, even though they had finished several minutes
apart. It took some back and forth on the radio to
sort it out and some extended/shortened patterns. Normally
with a gate finish the arrival sequence does an okay
good job of setting up landing order. In this case
with finishers at all different altitudes, speeds and
directions, the '4 mile' call doesn't give you a very
good sense of who you're landing behind so we had to
sort it out all over again on downwind.

My second example involves a final course leg that
passed by a CB about 4 miles from the airport. Many
pilots held extra altitude until past the cell, then
dove for the cylinder. I finished several thousand
feet high and as I pulled up encountered another glider
with full divebrakes deployed to my left on a course
perpendicular to mine. Apparently he had finished even
higher and decided to let down by flying along the
edge of the cylinder. In my experience with gates most
finishers are going more or less the same direction
and are at more or less the same altitude for a given
speed. The cylinder seems to scatter this a fair bit
and generates more mixed traffic milling about on potentially
converging courses.

I'm not asserting that one form of finishing is inherently
safer than the other, just that they each have a set
of issues that require pilots to have good situational
awareness and exert reasonable judgement. I think
these are qualities that are not easily made up for
through legislation. I also strongly believe we should
defer to the judgement of the CD and the organizers
in setting up operations that suit the site - Parowan
is not Hobbs, Minden is different from Sugarbush.

Can you hear my knuckles dragging?

9B

LOL. Nice new thread title.

JJ,

How do you feel about remote finish cylinders (away from the airport)?
How about control points (last turnpoints) away from the airport?

Do you think this would have any benefit? Have you flown either
of these (presumably in other countries)?

In article .com,
wrote:
Let me tell you where I'm coming from on this gate issue. I was CD'ing
one of the Montague nationals and we were using the finish line. The
only practical location for the line was the edge of the X'ed-off
runway, but there were several competitors tied down there (read cars,
wives & kids) One of the wives complained about the low finishes coming
right over her motor home and asked if there wasn't an FAR about that?
I didn't have an answer, I still don't. As I understand the FAR's we
are not allowed to fly over people below 500 feet unless we are in the
act of landing. When we are driving in on the 50-foot gate, we are not
in the act of landing, but we are over people at Montague and the same
situation exists at Minden. If we were to move the line, say 500 feet
away from the people, we would end up with a low and slow finisher
landing in the sage brush.
God forbid, if we were to have a mid-air and the wreckage went into the
line, I guarantee you the feds would come down hard on what we are
doing.

The finish line seems to work OK at places like Hobbs, but I did have
an incident there last summer. I was driving in hard toward the 50 foot
finish line when a pilot from the other class called a rolling finish,
coming from the opposite direction. We didn't even come close, but
let's assume for the sake of discussion that we did run into each
other. One pilot is below 500 feet and in the act of landing. The other
pilot is below 500 feet and not in the act of landing. I know who's
going to lose this one, old JJ.

I have flown the finish cylinder at Reese, Parowan, Minden, Montague
and Ephrata without a hitch. Everybody pulls up, slows up, and enters
the pattern in an orderly fashion; low man goes in first. Based on my
30 years experience of using both gates and running contests, I would
estimate the finish cylinder to be on the order of 2 to 3 times safer
than the 50-foot finish line. Good management involves identifying
problems and taking corrective action, before we have an accident.
There is a better way to do this, let's bury the Neanderthal gate, once
and for all.

JJ Sinclair
PS. It's not widely known, but you don't need to make the 500 foot
minimum exactly at 1 mile. You will get a good finish anywhere inside
the cylinder, just as soon as you pull up and climb above the 500 foot
minimum. No penalty will apply, your clock just keeps running for a few
more seconds. This interpretation has been blessed by the rules
committee and the Byars scoring program works this way.



--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

Mark James Boyd wrote:
How do you feel about remote finish cylinders (away from the airport)?

Uh, remote finish cylinders or gates are not such a great idea, because
you ultimately have to land at the airport. Of course they could put
the floor way up high, but that would be really annoying.

How about control points (last turnpoints) away from the airport?

They are not needed for cylinders, but they are helpful for gates.

Do you think this would have any benefit? Have you flown either
of these (presumably in other countries)?

The Annual CCSC Contest at Avenal is less than two months away.
Everyone from first-timers to grizzled veterans is welcome, and they
loves their finish gate. There is also a PASCO League contest at Avenal
a weekend or two before, where you will likely experience a finish
cylinder. Rather than engaging in endless speculation, why don't you
just reserve the PW-5 and go for it?

Marc

In response to your first paragraph, at aiports all over the country
aircraft come within less than 500 feet of structures and people at
speeds above 150 mph thousands of times each day, every day of the
year. Midway, Reagan National, and Laguardia all have approaches that
bring them over people and buildings. I have on many occasions watched
landings from a park several hunderd feet from the threshold of one of
Reagan National's runways. Planes pass overhead no more than 200 feet
above the ground.

The rule, as I recall, states "except for take-off and landing..." Note
that most CDs post NOTAMs closing the airport during contest launch and
recovery operations. This implies a tacit waiver for a variety of
soaring related operations in the vicinity of the airport.

As for a the owner of mobile home, parked on the airport during a
scheduled, sanctioned soaring contest asking for a change in
practices, I'd be tempted to point at the wheels and leave my answer at
that. But that wouldn't be very diplo. Perhaps a better way to address
it would be to require RVs stay out of the way of glider operations.
You can park your RV here. This will avoid any conflict with aircraft.
I'll bet the argument goes the other way... convenience over perceived
safety issues. Its just a matter of crafting the either/or.

As for the cylinder, in another thread someone suggested I not pull up
after piercing the side, but just bleed off speed as I head towards the
airport. Now I have pilots attacking me from below. How much drag does
a ball turret gun cost?

Regarding the difficulty of sequencing gliders for landing after a
cylinder finish, this is exactly what gliders do every good soaring
day. All the gliders arrive from all directions at about pattern
altitude, do some sort of pattern entry, then land. Sometimes a bunch
of gliders all do this at the same time. We practice this all the
time, not just in contest flying. So at least this form of finish gets
practiced all the time.

Todd
3S

Todd,

We run tasks at our club every weekend for anywhere from three to a
dozen pilots at a time. Even with local pilots added to the mix, it
doesn't even come close to simulating the contest environment, where
pilots tend to cluster as part of their competitive strategy.

It's a placebo, and a dangerous on at that. And while I have a
preference for the finish line, for a host of reasons, the very lack of
regulation in the cylinder finish makes me question its perceived
"safety."

The difference between the final at the airports you mentioned, and a
typical contest "pattern roulette" is that the aircraft landing are
configured, stabilized, sequenced, and know where their traffic is. No
comparison here.

A couple of years ago at Region 9 Hobbs, all the classes were arriving
from everywhere. The Standards were coming from the east, flying over
the ramp, turning left over the gate, then turning back to the east for
left traffic for the ramp, crossing over/under the other finishers.
Wow, what a show.

JJ's right.

wrote:
In response to your first paragraph, at aiports all over the country
aircraft come within less than 500 feet of structures and people at
speeds above 150 mph thousands of times each day, every day of the
year. Midway, Reagan National, and Laguardia all have approaches that
bring them over people and buildings. I have on many occasions
watched
landings from a park several hunderd feet from the threshold of one
of
Reagan National's runways. Planes pass overhead no more than 200 feet
above the ground.

The rule, as I recall, states "except for take-off and landing..."
Note
that most CDs post NOTAMs closing the airport during contest launch
and
recovery operations. This implies a tacit waiver for a variety of
soaring related operations in the vicinity of the airport.

As for a the owner of mobile home, parked on the airport during a
scheduled, sanctioned soaring contest asking for a change in
practices, I'd be tempted to point at the wheels and leave my answer
at
that. But that wouldn't be very diplo. Perhaps a better way to
address
it would be to require RVs stay out of the way of glider operations.
You can park your RV here. This will avoid any conflict with
aircraft.
I'll bet the argument goes the other way... convenience over
perceived
safety issues. Its just a matter of crafting the either/or.

As for the cylinder, in another thread someone suggested I not pull
up
after piercing the side, but just bleed off speed as I head towards
the
airport. Now I have pilots attacking me from below. How much drag
does
a ball turret gun cost?

JJ's concern was over proximity to persons and strucutres... no
difference, save the descending heavy is less controlable than the high
energy glider. As for "pattern roulette," dogmatic monikers don't
change the fact that competent pilots function well in the environment,
as has been proven again and again for decades. Where problems arise is
when unschooled pilots start imposing their poor judgement, generally
creating a world of hurt for themselves and occasionally others. My
argument, and I think it is a valid one, is that moving that poor
judgement a mile away from the airport doesn't solve any problems. It
simply makes them less obvious to casual observers. And the fact that
there appear to be so many theories purporting to explain the dynamics
of the finish cylinder indicates that this hasn't been particularly
well thought out either.

As an example, I can state without hesitation that inserting yourself
into the pattern after a finish with half a dozen other gliders is much
easier than joining the same number low in a weak thermal and
maintaining safe separation while maximizing climb. That is hard work,
and it's done with very few options for maneuvering should a member of
the gaggle decide to do something untoward. Or if someone else enters
who lacks skills or depth perception.

wrote:
snip
My
argument, and I think it is a valid one, is that moving that poor
judgement a mile away from the airport doesn't solve any problems.
snip

My point is that moving that poor judgement UP 500-1000 ft DOES help
solve problems.

Todd