On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 4:02:29 PM UTC-6, Fox Sierra wrote:
BB,



Your keen insights as a professor of risk and volatility are needed here! How is it possible that so many gliders land within a few kilometers of the finish with a standard deviation of achieved distances of only a few kilometers!?!?!? Assuming there was not a wall of rain blocking the landing zone, wouldn't a few gliders be expected to have the extra 100 meters of altitude required??

FS

Big gaggle in desperation conditions, can't quite make the finish. A similar thing happened at Szeged. Under IGC rules, if you're with the lead gaggle of 20 gliders 1000' short of final glide, you do NOT leave. You stay with the gaggle. If the thermal dies and you're circling down .5 knots, you stay with the gaggle. If one guy leaves and lands out, but the others make it back, he's toast. If the gaggle all lands out, they all get 1000 points. Even if the lone wolf makes it back, he gets next to extra points for doing so.. From the Australian report, it sounds like this is exactly what happened -- a lead gaggle of 20 coalesced, and all landed together. Of course, had they not spent 45 minutes playing start games it would have ended differently. But that game has to be played too under IGC rules. And people want to do this in the US....Ok, off soap box for now.