*I don't see a discussion of an exit
at the back followed by overflight of the cylinder, bumping prestart
gaggles, but not descending below max start height.

With the proposed rule, you are allowed to exit out the back or the
top, and then overfly the start cylinder. You are even allowed to dip
in to the start cylinder, so long as you are not below MSH for 2
minutes. We thought of lots of ways to rule this out but everything
we could think of would have led to a far too complex rule. There are
enough problems with the 2 minute rule; imagine what happens if we
make some rule forcing some separation from the start cylinder.

If you blast through prestart gaggles above the start cylinder you
will still be eligible for unsafe flying penalties, just as if you
were blasting through gaggles on course. I hope this (plus other less
formal sanctions from your fellow pilots, and a bit of common sense)
is enough to keep it from happening.

The rule is "experimental", being tried for regionals this year. One
of many things we should keep our eyes on is whether such gaggle-
bumping turns out to be a problem. If it does, we'll either make the
rule more complex to try to rule it out, or we'll just scrap the whole
business and go back to the old way of doing things.

I envy you Western pilots. I haven't seen the top of the start
cylinder in a long time.


I admit I have not studied the new rule yet. *What distance is used
for a start out of the top with the cylinder being cleared before
descending below max start height? *It used to be distance B but now
is it distance C (not depicted) where C is the distance between the
first turn and the point where the cylinder was exited though the top.


I'm not sure I follow this. If you thermal through the top of the
cylinder, and you do not reenter, your start fix is where you cut the
top of the cylinder. You get credit for distance from this point to
the first turn.

John