Casey,

Yes - what I was calling an AST is what you call a
TAT or in the FAI lingo Speed Task with Assigned Areas.

I think you will find a greater level of acceptance
of area tasks at a regional or national level than
you will at international level. I have a theory as
to why this may be the case...

As I mentioned there were only a few pilots at the
Worlds that supported AST's. To quote one of them
'I like ASTs as they allow pilots that don't normally
do very well to score well for a day'. This pilot
had realised that, because ASTs increase the luck factor,
pilots that were consistently scoring towards the bottom
half of the field sometimes popped towards the top
of the score sheet when an AST was set. Whilst this
is all nice and friendly it's not really what international
competition is all about. (I suggested to the guy
that we could also do spot prizes for the funniest
face painted on a glider or maybe play pass-the-parcel
on rainy days).

It’s good to give everyone a chance to do well at a
club level comp. ASTs also allow experienced pilots
to fly further whilst reducing the probability of a
landout for more experienced pilots. However, proper
comps (international/national level) should be about
racing.

Makoto Ichikawa also supports AST's as he believes
they reduce following.

Regards,

Ben.




At 23:06 02 September 2003, Kilo Charlie wrote:
Ben and Marcel...thank you for your responses. It
is great to get input
from pilots that have flown at the Worlds and know
the way things worked (or
didn't work) there.

It seemed to me that pilots in the last 3 world contests
were being asked to
fly exceptionally long days with respect to the conditions
each day. I
admit to not following each day closely so my perception
could be wrong.
The point of this 'new' task (it is much like other
new and old tasks at
least in the US) is to force pilots to fly during less
than optimal times of
the day or conditions. Currently the way tasking is
set in the US we are on
task for the minimum time only (or close to it) and
flying when it might be
weak is discouraged by the rules. Maybe the worlds
tasking is simply a
function of calling very long tasks in terms of time
or distance and the way
to narrow the gap is for us in the US to just call
longer times.

Re the 'AST' that was confusing Andy....in the US the
official designation
for what the FAI rules call a 'racing task' is what
we term an 'assigned
task' but used to be known as an 'assigned speed task'
aka AST. It looks
like what Ben is calling an AST is what we call a TAT
or in the FAI lingo
Speed Task with Assigned Areas. Is that correct Ben?
For those that may
not have had a look go to the following link to view
the FAI World rules:
http://www.fai.org/sporting_code/sc3.asp

There are lots of pilots here in the US that would
prefer having only racing
tasks as well but actually the TAT has been accepted
better than some
thought it would be. There are lots of arguements
both ways here but no
doubt that the TAT introduces a bit more luck/chance
but also may test pilot
skills that may not be tested in the racing task such
as ability to select
the best routes. Even more so for the Speed Task-Pilot
Selected or what we
call the MAT here in the US.

In my opinion it is good to have ongoing discussions
and debates re the
rules whether at the international or local level.
Thanks again for your
comments.

Casey