On Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:02:46 AM UTC-7, wrote:

Here's the current Club participants at 2014 Nationals along with handicaps and handicap difference to the median:

Glider Hcp Hcp vs median
LS-6 0.898 0.06
304CZ-17 0.902 0.05
Discus cs 0.915 0.04
ASW-20C-15 0.917 0.04
Discus 2b 0.925 0.03
Discus 2a 0.928 0.03
Discus a 0.937 0.02
DG-200-15 0.940 0.02
PIK-20D 0.952 0.00
Genesis II 0.956 0.00
304C 0.956 0.00
H-301 Libelle 0.979 (0.02)
Std Cirrus 1.001 (0.05)
ASW-15B 1.003 (0.05)
Std Libelle 1.008 (0.05)
Std Libelle 1.010 (0.05)
Silent 2a 1.040 (0.08)
Apis 13 1.148 (0.19)

The big outliers in handicap that drive the range up are at the low performance end. We can quibble about whether an LS-6 is too high performance at 2% more than a Discus cs, but the D-2s are nicely between the Discus CS and the Discus a with 1% difference in handicap. It seems to me like a bit of a red herring to argue for excluding D-2, LS-8 and ASW-28 - they don't expand the handicap range hardly at all (.01 vs a Discus). They are closer to the median handicap of the gliders flying than the Libelle, ASW-15 or Standard Cirrus. The much bigger issue is the low performance end if handicap spread is the concern.

Just a little data.

9B