On Jan 8, 7:45*am, wrote:
On Jan 7, 3:04*pm, wrote:

Looks like the general rc philosophy is promoting airmanship rather
than gamesmanship. *I like that.

There are some interesting strawmen presented in this thread... but
surely these are only strawmen.

Even in the worst case presented, the new rule is still a significant
improvement.

I thought that the original 'start anywhere' was a big improvement in
reducing gaggling and leeching. And it was actually simpler than the
old rule. I feel like this modification dilutes the impact of that
rule change by bunching starts back into a smaller part of the
cylinder and adds complexity and uncertainty to the start process.
Pilots do try to optimize for the rules even to save a few points or
tens of points. (The last contest I flew 40 points separated 6th and
2nd place).

To the extent that a rule affects pilot actual decision-making it's
not a strawman issue. Knowing whether you are giving up a few miles of
scored distance at the start is something that pilots will act on -
just the way we all acted on the old rule that encouraged pilots to
start from the edge of the cylinder closest to the courseline. Lastly,
my experience with the start anywhere rule last year is that pilots
bombing through pre-start gaggles didn't happen so, to me, that is
more the strawman issue that needs to be proven before adding
complexity to the rules. I'd love to hear from pilots who had a
different contest experience with the 2008 rules.

9B