On Tuesday, July 15, 2014 10:53:09 AM UTC-7, Sean Fidler wrote:
So even though the start gate roulette idea is a little over-rated it could be fixed by narrowing the starting range (yes, I know, another rule modification, but tough ;-)

Hey Sean (and everyone) - we added "last start time (LST)" to the rules this year specifically to satisfy this need. We'd love to see a Regional CD (or a few) try it out once (or more) in a class with a reasonable number of gliders (a dozen or fewer). No rules mod required - it's in there!

As to OLC as a format. It seems that the best use of OLC is...well...OLC. I'm not sure re-making SSA sanctioned contests into OLC camps will help matters much since we have two pilot segments - distance fliers and head-to-head racers (more or less) with different preferences. I read the Competition Enterprise rules and the scoring part seems like it is very oriented towards distance flying as well - just co-located starts (which addresses a few of Sean's points about flying in the same sky at least). I do think having more OLC camps like Nephi is potentially a very good idea as it at least puts some competitive and social "juice" into the flying. Maybe a bit more competitive structure into an OLC camp would be welcome - I don't really know. Bruno, you out there to enlighten us?

Trying to draw some relevance to the original post about classes - I detect some interest in more inclusive racing and less class divisions, the way to do that and still be fair to pilots flying different gliders is some form of handicapping. The question is across which classes and for which contests?

9B