We run a club contest in Northern Illinois. For the past few years we
handicapped pilots in much the same way as a golf handicap works. We
score out of 1000 as in "real" races, with glider handicaps. Your
pilot handicap is your average score over all flights in the past 2
years. Thus, if you averaged 800 points, your handicap is 800. If you
earn 800 points on a given day, it's as if you got 1000 points. If you
earn 900 points, it's like 9/8 x 1000. We renormalize so that final
points max at 1000. In this way the winner is the "most improved"
pilot.

If you're interested the rules are on my webpage, under "northern
illinois contest"

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.c...rs/#For_glider

This is an elegant solution and worked well on any given day. We are
going to scrap it however, as it did not do much to bring new pilots
in to active cross-country flying. I guess "I'll get a poor score"
really wasn't that big an impediment after all. And our hot racers
found it annoying; they preferred to be scored as in the real contests
they're practicing for.

John Cochrane