Hi kirk,
Windscore will flag any finish that doesn't meet the
set altitude. The scorer then compares your finish
altitude with the altitude recorded on landing. If
your landing pressure altitude shows 100 feet below
known field altitude, then you are allowed to finish
100 feet below the set finish altitude. Same process
is used for the start.

A contestant who comes home faster and then makes
a rolling finish may beat the guy that finishes slower
to make the 500 foot and 1 mile finish cylinder, soooooooooo,
most CD's will impose a 2 minute penalty for making
a rolling finish.
JJ

At 21:12 26 July 2007, Kirk.Stant wrote:
A question: How does Winscore calculate finish altitude
on a cylinder
finish? I assume it is based on the logger's pressure
altitude
reading for the closest logger fix after crossing the
finish line, but
how is that altitude adjusted for the local altimeter
setting? Does
it compare the difference between the finish 'altitude'
and the
altitude recorded when the glider comes to a stop on
the field?

What if the field has a slope, and there is a significant
difference
in elevation between where the glider stops after a
finish (hopefully
not because it's in a tree!) and the official altitude
of the finish
point?

On a separate (but related subject), could someone
please explain to
me once again how staring at an altimeter and/or doing
low energy
pullups during a contest cylinder finish is safe?
Or how the
sometimes smarter (from a RACING perspective) alternative
of not
wasting the time climbing those extra 500 ft, instead
doing an L/D max
glide to a rolling finish, stopping as soon as possible
on the first
bit of airfield, is a safer alternative than just calculating
a
competitive safe final glide and flying it to the finish,
then flying
the pattern dictated by the conditions?

Maybe we need radar altimeters in our gliders - oops,
that wouldn't
work at Newcastle, never mind....Too bad our expensive
loggers don't
tell us what altitude it's going to tell the scorer
we finished at in
real time, so we could salvage a botched finish...

Kirk
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