I was wondering how long it would take for TET to rear
its head in this thread. Flew it for a whole season
- hated it. This seems only somewhat better in that
it seems easier to measure distance in a set time than
to convert distance into time - but is misses the basic
viceral appeal that racing is about speed over a course
- not whatever part you've completed by some indeterminate
time. Particularly given that the final glide normally
is at ~30 knots faster than average X-C speed, so it
would seem to give winners a non-linear point spread
over those who didn't get far into final glide.

If it were me, I'd monitor the radio for the fastest
finishers - then dive for the deck if I weren't close
to home -- no point in having any altitude in the bank
and not turn it into points, plus you'd want to end
your flight on a glide rather than a climb for speed
averaging reasons.

As for weighting, why wouldn't you measure distance
on a daily basis and weight the days by elapsed time
for each day? I agree that time is the main factor
that determines how many chances a pilot gets to make
good decisions or bad ones.

Worth noodling on as a concept - but at first blush
it seems to add more problems that it solves and might
require too many band-aids to make workable.

9B

At 07:18 07 October 2003, Jonathan Gere wrote:
(John Cochrane) wrote
The big issue is that the difference between 90 and
91 mph on a strong
day becomes much more important than the difference
between 30 and 31
mph on a weak day. It's 3 times as important if the
tasks are the same
length of time, since you cover 3 times as much distance
going from 90
to 91 mph than you do going from 30 to 31 mph. If
the fast day is a 4
hour task and the weak day is a 2 hour task, it becomes
6 times more
important to go the extra mph on a strong day.

3 times more important????
91t-90t=t
31t-30t=t
((V+1)*t)-(V*t)=(V+1-V)*t= t

6 times more important????
91*4-90*4=4 91*2-90*2=2
31*4-30*4=4 31*2-30*2=2

Under this type of scoring 1 extra mph is worth the
task time whether
it's a 10 or 200mph day. It's the 1000 point scoring
which gives the
point difference between 90 and 91 as one third the
difference between
30 and 31. And then throws in another effective 50%
devaluation of
the good day if it happened to be 4 hours of racing
instead of 2.
Anyway, you could look at it that way.

However, on a 4 hr task you waste only 2.64 minutes
to get from 91mph
down to 90, but you waste a full 7.74 minutes to get
from 31mph down
to 30. How in the world can TET purist Bill Feldbaumer
stomach both
differences being worth 4 miles? A minute is a minute,
right?

Jonathan Gere


Advocates might say this is good. (Though it could
also be achieved by
changing the mind-boggling devaluation formula we
currently use to one
based on distance achieved, if that's the only benefit.)

I (for once) don't have a strong opinion, but I'm
curious if the
supporters have thought this through, and why they
think putting so
much more emphasis on strong days is a good idea.

John Cochrane