On May 29, 10:05*am, rlovinggood wrote:
On May 29, 2:19*am, Andy wrote:

On May 28, 6:48*am, wrote:

Back at the 2006 Club Class Worlds in Vinon France we went on a 498km
assigned task, in thunderstorms, and I think I pushed my Libelle
around at @ 113kmh - and that only gave me 5th or 6th on the day.
Still - shows that "old" gliders can certainly go out on long,
assigned tasks like the "FAI" classes.

Tim EY

Impressive - Tim's example rightly takes the wind out of the argument
that the US needs a separate Club Class based on the belief that Club
Class gliders can't go out on "big boy" tasks.

9B

9B,

I disagree. *Those of us who support a Club Class in America aren't
concerned about the length of the task called. *Heck no. *What we want
is the ability to call Racing Tasks (also called Assigned Tasks)
instead of just Turn Area Tasks and Modified Assigned Tasks. *We also
want a group of gliders more closely matched in performance. *And, we
would like to get a handle on the assignment of handicaps. *Since many
other countries already fly Club Class, I think they are using an IGC
based system of assigning handicaps. *Is it any better than the Carl
Herald (sp?) system (and modified Carl Herald numbers) that we now
use? *I hope so. *And maybe we here in the US can start using the IGC
handicaps for future Club Class races.

I flew in the First United States Club Class Race in Cordele, Georgia
just a couple of weeks back and it was real fun to line up on the grid
and not see a bunch of ASW-27's, Duo Discii, Ventus V2's, Discus D2's,
JS1's, 304s', Diana's, etc in our class. *The weather cooperated one
day for a real assigned task to be called. *Hallelujah!
Unfortunately, the Cordele weather of legend didn't show up and the
three other days we flew, we had Turn Area Tasks. *But at least our
CD, Sam Giltner, kept the circles small which gave us more of a chance
to stay and race together rather than spreading us out over many
square miles that really big circles can do.

I'm not concerned about "big boy" tasks. *Of course, any of my friends
who might be tasked to come get me might have a bit more concern...

Sincerely,
Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA

I'll second all that. Having flown in the same contest, it was really
cool to share thermals all the way around the course.
At one point I think there were 6 gliders (out of 17) all in one
thermal out on course. At the end we all ended up
in adjacent fields (since only about 5 made it around thanks to a big
cloud shadow shooting most of us down).

The contest ended up being much more competitive than sports class
contests I've flown. Being that it was
the first in the US it took on something of a "national competition"
character, and it attracted pilots
from all across the country and Canada too. Many mentioned 15+ hour
drives to get to the contest.

Sports class still has its place. It might be a better venue for
someone starting out to have easier tasks
to fly. If our assigned task had been called as a 3 turn MAT a larger
number of pilots may have made it back
after 1 or 2 turnpoints because that would have been less challenging,
but where's the point in that when
you're trying to call a strong challenge for everyone?

-- Matt