dan,

i believe that you are wrong. this in no way makes you a bad person for being wrong. i think your starting to get it now. this rule is simply not going to survive as it stands. its just bad (the cell phone thing too).

grammer (capitalization, etc) is rarely a concern for me from a cell phone as I travel throughout the day. i really dont care about editing this stuff. if you dont like it, dont read it. i type once and move on. get over it. is that all you have now? lol! but i guess you are trying to call me dumb in your own little way there, huh dan? ok. fine.

dan, this is not a personal thing with anyone (at least with me). it is a very healthy argument and is worthwhile. just because you dont like it i should take your example (which i highly doubt) and stop? it has meaning to many and there are alot of people who share my opinion. it is really about a principle we apparently do not share. safety focus or pure competition? trust pilots or dont. go with technology smoothly or fight it tooth and nail as old foggy's have with every new advancement in this sport and others for years (gps, vario's, smartphones, etc)

i vote safety in favor of honest sportsman. let people use AH if they choose, its more of a pain in the ass to remove them now then not allowing them.. they are everywhere. i vote to let new technology such as smart phones in (as literally everyone has them right now as I type) rather than making everyone instead go to walmart and screw around buying some other useless cheapy phone for the contest. come on guys! seriously? this clearly is really going to irritate alot of people as you can already see. its so dumb its literally sad. the rules committee has been focused on safety recently in certain areas but it needs to refresh a few more rules in order to be consistent. these two rules (no ah and no smart phone) clearly stand out as not focused on safety. not to mention they are dumb rules based on today's reality.

do you really think that a pilot with a smartphone is going to be flying in the clouds and disseminating weather information well enough to win contests? is this the same protest the slow movers in soaring had to electronic vario's in the 70's and GPS in the 90's? i praise tom k for standing up and calling out the rule in the past but that does not make the rule right. and i did not hear a peep from anyone in the 3 contests i flew last season. why...because its a dumb rule and only a couple people care about it.

lets not be dumb anymore everyone. lets be smart and change these silly rules and move on. ;-)

Sean
F2