On Dec 15, 7:23*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
On Dec 14, 4:24*pm, Mike the Strike wrote:

With almost perfect timing to answer some of the problems raised by
the USA Competition Rules Committee, Tucson Soaring Club is pleased to
make a preliminary announcement of a Cross-Country Soaring Camp. *

I can't resist the bait. What "problems" exactly? Almost all of the
goals here are easy to accomplish in a "real" contest. Fees are
completely up to the organizer. If you want to charge less, be our
guest. If you want to let pilots go anywhere they want and score by
distance, call an unrestricted MAT with 8 hours. Or call 4 30 mile
turn areas, which is almost the same as OLC. All the rest can be
accomplished by waiver.

Cross country camps are fine. But I hate to see this framed as a
"answer" to unnamed "problems" with contest rules. The rules are
written to make contests fair, safe, affordable, and above all
attractive. If something else improves on the "attractive" part, tell
the RC how to fix it rather than give up and start something new.

John Cochrane

John:

Perhaps I should have used the term "issues" rather than "problems".

Firstly, we chose to have a camp because we were told that there were
no available windows for a sanctioned contest. Secondly, we wanted a
more rule-free environment to encourage uninhibited cross-country
flying. One of the issues we had last year in a local contest series
was a delayed start (3:00 PM!) with a long task that proved impossible
to fly in the allocated time. A whole bunch of gliders hung around
for hours waiting for the start as the day died. The task was also
set in the opposite direction to the best weather and ended up with a
lot of landouts. Furthermore, enabling free flying with no set course
will avoid the majority of conflicts in gaggles and turnpoints,
greatly enhancing safety. One or two local pilots have a good history
of spotting days with early starts and have made good use of those.
We want to encourage pilots to read the weather and conditions and
decide for themselves when and where to fly, rather than just race
round a fixed course.

However, a particular beef of mine is the US attitude to team flying,
which is diametrically opposite to that in the rest of the world.
Free of this (uniquely US) rule, we can fly together, chat about it,
fly further and have more fun. Pretty much what we do most weekends.
We also see the camp as a good format to bring on juniors, less
experienced cross-country pilots and those not familiar with the area
by providing mentors. Even you must agree that regular contests
aren't the best place for newcomers to hone their skills.

Free of the contest restriction to cross certain airspace will also
improve opportunities from El Tiro (this is for Kirk).

Insurance for contests is significantly higher than camps or fly-ins
and we are going to avoid a lot of the costs of having manpower to do
task-setting and scoring.

In short, we are also trying to encourage cross-country flying, but
don't think that contests with ever-increasing restrictive rules are
necessarily the only or best way to achieve this.

Mike