At 12:24 23 February 2018, Bruce Hoult wrote:

The most efficient is to climb *just* enough in the last thermal to
cruise
=
at MC=3DfinalClimbRate and arrive at the finish line with zero
altitude
and=
land through it.

However if you misjudge that and end up short then it's a very bad
day, so
=
everyone puts an extra 500 ft or 1000 ft in the bank before
starting the
fi=
nal glide.

Having done that (and wasted anything from one to five minutes
more than
yo=
u really needed to climbing), you can get a minute or more back
by
speeding=
up 20 or 30 km before the finish to again plan to arrive at the
finish at
=
zero altitude .. but with a much higher speed.


Thank you Bruce for sparing me the need to spell it out for those
who have not done much competition flying. We "fudge in" extra
altitude for unexpected sink along the final glide. I was once at
120 Kts, full of water, 5 miles from the finish, at 2,000' AGL (at
Hobbs in the early 1980's), and even passed up a 10 Kt dust devil
along the way, only to run into extreme sink and headwind over
irrigated fields in the last couple of miles so that I was just barely
able to make a direct rolling finish. Other times, one runs into
unexpected lift along final glide and winds up with a lot of excess
energy, some of which can be converted to speed points by doing a
flying finish. Now, if all of the minimum finish altitudes are jacked
up, and direct rolling finishes are not allowed, that is again another
matter, but contrary to some people's opinions, there has been a
place in competition soaring for low flying finishes.

RO