On Sep 25, 10:36*am, "Tim Mara" wrote:
I do strongly disagree with your comment Tim that it is a good idea to
try to build the club Class at the expense of Sports Class. My
personal view it that such a path sacrifices significant opportunities
to bring new competition pilots into the sport in order to benefit of
a small number of pilots. *The last Sports Class Nationals had 8 two-
seat gliders competing - most with pilots new to competition in at
least one of the seats.

I don't think the potential is for a "small number of pilots"
there are certainly far more glider pilots and gliders that do not
participate than there are total number of pilots of all categories that fly
contests. If you are looking only to satisfy those who are already flying
contest then leave it as it is, these guys are apparently happy enough with
status as it is....if you are looking at broading interest in contest flying
then it's apparent that every year changing the rules, tweaking handicaps
and having more of the same discussions isn't working.

It's a question of numbers. If Club Class can put up solid numbers of
national caliber pilots then it is a legitimate way to pick a team. If
it can also bring significant numbers of new pilots into racing then
it is worth investing in. *If it becomes another World Class
benefitting a very small number of pilots then it is not worth
investing in. *The experience to-date has been mostly the latter.
9B

not everyone is concerned that the end to all contest is to crown the next
world team....I dare to suggest that relatively few of even the current
partisipants have a chance or even care that there is a potential to be on a
world team....we're speaking of the sport of flying gliders and doing
something that actually in the scheme of all things is there to creat an
interest in fun....soaring contest are the social event for all of soaring,
for what it's worth, the "fly-in" for glider pilots

Agreed. This thread started, however, as a discussion about a proposed
change in WGC team selection criteria for Club Class. If it's all
about fun then the proposed change in WGC team selection should be a
non-issue for most pilots.

I'd be quite happy to score Club Class as a subset of Sports Class
until such time that Club Class has grown enough to stand on its own
(that IS the proposition being put forward after all, that Club Class
will grow significantly). Then it might be worth the tradeoff of
leaving Duos and Arcuses and DG-1000s and Nimbus 2s and 3s and Grob
Twins and ASK-21s and Russias and Ka-8s without a class to fly in at a
number of regionals because there are too few of them.

If you look at the actual numbers at regionals you find that the total
number of Sports/Club Class gliders often number around 5-8, more or
less evenly divided between Club and non-Club Class gliders. Dividing
it in two without generating significant growth would be ill-advised.
So, how do we prove that Club Class will grow without taking the fun
out by forcing large-scalle reshuffling of classes? (e.g. forcing
everyone fly Sports, or Open or 18M to try to get to enough
competitors to make a class). My suggestion, above, would be to score
and recognize the best scoring Club Class glider within Sports Class,
then you can prove the theory rather than just talk about it. No one
is going to make permanent changes to the rules without evidence that
the rationale for the change is valid. The rationale here is if we
separate out Club Class it will grow significantly.

I am not sure what you mean when you say rule changes decrease
interest in flying contests. I'm sure many people resisted
introduction of GPS, new task types that no longer require a ground
crew, end of worm-burner finishes at zero feet, loss of redline starts
and introduction of Sports Class. But I would argue that all these
changes increased, rather than decreased interest in contest flying.
If we took your suggestion to end the tweaking of handicaps by
eliminating them then all those non-FAI or old generation gliders
would have to fly in Std, 15M, 18M or Open. I think that would be
less fun overall. There is no point to handicaps if you have to stick
with them despite evidence that they are off - these days it seems we
only correct handicaps for the occasional glider type that doesn't fly
often in competition.

What we have right now is too few pilots flying across too many
classes - it creates problems for organizers - decreases fun for
competitors (IMO) and makes competitions less competitive. If adding
classes doesn't increase the ranks of competition pilots it weakens
the argument to do it in the first place.

9B