On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 4:24:22 PM UTC-5, Kevin Christner wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

yeah, i'd like to see a SUA hard deck file that works for any of new york state... we land on the high ground, we land in the valleys. we also ridge soar 700 feet above the valley floor to make saves. there is no practical way to make a SUA file for Mifflin, Harris hill, blairstown, new hampshire, VT et cetera. the terrain is far too complex. maybe for a place like TSA, Hobbs, Ceasar Creek, or perry, you could implement it, but there are just too many places where you can be thermalling within proximity of higher terrain, while maintaining a good altitude margin above the surrounding area. google Mount pisgah in PA, and imagine a low save 500 feet above the peak of that mountain. there's just no way to make it sensical in areas of complex terrain.