Calling a Good Task

[Brad Alston]

All of this banter about classes, and what's fair or not for a class, leads me to a couple of questions. Now, please understand that I am not a competition pilot so forgive if I sound a bit naive. I have been doing a little online research but don't find a lot of information...or I'm looking in the wrong place!

First, what constitutes a good task? Is there an established set of criteria used when evaluating weather, site, and aircraft?

Second, has there been any effort to programmatically "call" a task based on a set of criteria?...like the above mentioned factors. I don't believe you can substitute good human judgement with a set of executable instructions ...but it may be helpful to use technology to assist with task calling given what seems like a very complex set of variables. Who knows, maybe the task caller could do some sort of Monte Carlo simulations for a task, given all the variables, and have results showing the probability of success for a number of potential tasks!

Any thoughts? How about references on task calling?

Brad A.

[John Cochrane[_3_]]

On Nov 19, 9:17*pm, Brad Alston
> wrote:
> All of this banter about classes, and what's fair or not for a class,
> leads me to a couple of questions. Now, please understand that I am not
> a competition pilot so forgive if I sound a bit naive. I have been doing
> a little online research but don't find a lot of information...or I'm
> looking in the wrong place!
>
> First, what constitutes a good task? Is there an established set of
> criteria used when evaluating weather, site, and aircraft?
>
> Second, has there been any effort to programmatically "call" a task
> based on a set of criteria?...like the above mentioned factors. I don't
> believe you can substitute good human judgement with a set of executable
> instructions ...but it may be helpful to use technology to assist with
> task calling given what seems like a very complex set of variables. Who
> knows, maybe the task caller could do some sort of Monte Carlo
> simulations for a task, given all the variables, and have results
> showing the probability of success for a number of potential tasks!
>
> Any thoughts? How about references on task calling?
>
> Brad A.
>
> --
> Brad Alston

There's lots of good advice in the appendix to US contest rules
https://www.ssa.org/files/member/2012%20SSA%20U.S.%20National%20FAI-Class%20Rules.pdf
start reading at page 26

The "guide to competition"
https://www.ssa.org/files/member/SSA%20Guide%20to%20Competition%202011.pdf
has good advice oriented towards the pilots, see p. 13

the safety checklist also has a few good tips
https://www.ssa.org/files/member/Organizer%20Safety%20Checklist%20and%20Safety%20Ta lk%20Topics.pdf

if the links don't work, this is all from the ssa webpage under rules
and process

John Cochrane

[Brad Alston]

Thank you for the references John. After an evening of reading, I see the only real criteria for good task calling is that they are safe and fair.

Safety seems to be fairly easy to understand; things like reducing the risk for collision at the start, on course (around turnpoints and such), or at the finish of a task. In addition, providing adequate safe land-out opportunities, should the need arise, along the course line for the task. I would think everyone involved in a competition would be in agreement with having a safe task.

So I've concluded, maybe incorrectly, that the issue raising most of the "stink" is all about what is a "fair" task. With the variety of sailplanes available (handicaps), variability of weather, pilot skill level, terrain, and etcetera, I can understand why there might be some difficulty with this aspect of tasking.

I still think there may be a way to provide some sort of automated decision support for task calling...now to try and quantify those contributing factors! :)

Anyone out there willing to share their opinion from an experience as to why they feel a particular task at a particular contest was safe AND fair?