John,

I will be the first to admit that you are an extremely smart guy. I would not raise my hand to go up against you in Jeopardy any time soon. I greatly enjoy reading your outstanding soaring articles and have tremendous respect for your many insights within our sport.

I 100% agree that the honor system is the right way to proceed forward. Essentially that has been the case even with this rule historically in place and the recent reminder to the contest pilot community from the SSA Rules Committee. I believe that it would be much easier (and safer) for everyone, at this point, to simply allow everyone to install or keep any existing AH or T&B enabled instrument they currently fly (about 15 people I know flew with AH or T&B in various regional contests last year and were entirely unaware of the specifics of this rule). Let the honor system work.

I believe the vast majority of our soaring colleagues are extremely honest, would never willingly cheat for any reason and are primarily concerned with safe flight for themselves and their fellow pilots. As of right now we have butterfly (vario) removing their AH capability for the SSA rules committee, but 4-5 other instruments from various manufacturers (LK8000, XC Soar, Iphone, Andriod, LX8000, LX 9000, etc, etc) are going to need the same oversight. Its going to go on and on and on.

I think I have already proven that this rule is entirely unenforced, unenforceable and noneffective in general. Technology is going to move faster than our rules committee can follow. This is what is happening now and why there is so much debate today. If you really think about it (by definition of the current rule) almost every SSA competition pilot cheated for the past 2-3 years by having their GPS and accelerometer/gyro equipped iPhone or Android phone on board (http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhon...ardown/3156/1).

If somebody really wants to cheat and cloud fly this season it could be done with more and more ease each season as new and improved electronics are released. It would not be hard to do now if someone really wanted to do it. The manufactures own customers are asking for the AH capability for safety reasons (very efficient and slick to integrate into the multi function displays of modern instruments) and the manufacturers want to deliver this value. The current AH/T&B ban rule creates are real conflict with innovation.. To spend all this effort disarming all and any upcoming instrument is going to be extremely difficult for pilots and committee members (all to prevent one yahoo from cheating whom the rule wont stop from doing so as it is currently enforced and written). It could also invite some extremely ugly protests, etc.

Sincerely,

Sean
F2