On Sep 23, 12:55*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:

1) *I strongly believe in a "run what ya brung" class.

Noel,

I am a long time sports class pilot, flying a Grob 102 and would love
a "club" class so that I would be scored more fairly, but I would miss
flying with my friends that have non-club qualifying gliders.

On balance, I would keep the classes combined.



2) *New pilots need to have a fun atmosphere where they feel that they
can do well. *But they don't need to _win_ to have a good time,

But long time pilots that fly low level equipment must be able to win,
if they are flying the best at that contest.



3) *If people feel that the handicap is out-of-whack or unfairly ...

The problem is that the handicapping should really depend on the
weather conditions, a single number handicap only works well within a
small range of handicaps. Especially for a weather driven sport.

Finally: *The idea of a handicapping system is NOT to level the
playing-field 100%,

Yes the idea IS to level the playing field between different aircraft,
leaving pilot ability the determining factor. So that the better pilot
wins.

It is very hard to have any semblance of fairness when the rating
spread is as wide as a Nimbus 3 against a ASK 14.


--Noel

Thanks
Todd Smith
3S