Interesting point, John. We will know more how this plays out when we have
flown our first contest using accumulated distance.

Personally, I believe longer tasks should have a higher weight because the
luck factor is averaged out much better over a longer task. For example on a
day where contestants fly only 50 miles, a luck thermal that gets one pilot
2000 ft when everyone else is landing, will give this pilot an additional
distance of 13 miles which is a significant percentage gain over the field.
There is no way that one lucky thermal can make such a difference during a
long task.

As I said, so far we have scored based on distance but normalized to 1000
points. This has led to interesting results during the 2003 Nationals where
the weather was extremely weak:

On a day where the winner flew 200 km, one km was worth 5 points (no
devaluation)
On a day where the winner flew 100 km, one km was worth about 0.7 points due
to severe devaluation
If we had a 500 k day, one km would have been worth 2 points

Pretty strange, I would say.

BTW, I believe the reason why contests get decided on weak days is simply
that some pilots land out and take a significant landout penalty under
traditional scoring, and other pilots are lucky enough to get the extra
thermal that gets them back.

All the Best,

Joerg Stieber