In article ,
says...
I do like a
finish gate and feel that it is safer than a cylinder. As you are
finishing you can hear others calling 4 miles and knowing your own
location it is much easier to look for others as everyone approaches
the finish line from generally the same direction.

My experience with start gates and finish cylinders is this feature
applies to both of them. Gliders usually finish from the same
direction when the last turnpoint is the same, as it is for an
assigned speed task. For the MAT task (or a Regional were the classes
often have different tasks), they might be finishing for any
direction, depending on what turnpoint the individual pilots used
last. At Ephrata, we deal with this by calling in at 4 miles out AND
announcing the direction we are coming from.

The finish cylinder seems safer to me in the situation where gliders
are finishing from different directions; for example, if they are
finishing in opposite directions, they finish two miles apart (1 mile
radius finish cylinder), and then slow down and (at Ephrata, anyway)
switch to the airport frequency, so they can do a normal pattern and
landing.
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Eric Greenwell
Richland, WA (USA)