On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:24:12 -0700, jb92563 wrote:

What is the Club Class?

A handicapped list of gliders. The types included on the list and the
handicaps they use are defined by the FAI. Only gliders on the list are
eligible for the international Club class.

How is that different from Sport Class?

My understanding is that the SSA, like the BGA, has its own handicapping
system which covers just about any glider that can be flown in a regional
or national competition. The BGA's list certainly includes everything
from the Falke and Slingsby T.21 to the ASW22bl and Nimbus 4. Like your
Sports class the range of types is too wide to allow fair and sensible
tasks to be set in weak conditions.

So, an observation from the right side of the pond: I hope it may help
this discussion.

My club runs a Regionals every year that usually attracts 50-60 entries.
All gliders are handicapped using the BGA handicaps. The gliders are
split into two classes on the handicap. Each class is tasked separately,
so the lower performance gliders can be given a shorter task, but both
tasks are launched at almost the same time. The classes alternate
position on the grid each day, typically with a short launching gap
between classes, so they can use separate start times to ease congestion
etc. The workload on the CD and organisation isn't much different from
running a single task for all gliders.

At first glance this split might work quite well for an American combined
Club and Sports class contest with the main difference that Club class
would only include gliders eligible for the FAI Club class.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
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