John

As a Canadian, forced to fly using this flawed system for the last two
Canadian Nationals I have flown, I couldn't agree with you more. On a
less extreme side (and more typical of the systems mass mentality for
those who chose not to chance having to thermal from low altitude to
get home after timeout) here are some other flaws:

1. The optimum finish, assuming you make it home before the timeout,
is to head off to a few close in turnpoints and plan it so that you
are on course line, at 0 MaCready for home airport, at timeout. This
is extremely UNSAFE. It leads to many finishers coming back to the
home airport from a low energy final glide from all directions. I
remember a day at Rockton were we had about 4 gliders finish without a
circuit from four directions.

2. To solution proposed for the flaw of many finishers from many
directions at low energy, was simply to try to force everyone to
timeout before they got back to the home area (I guess then you only
have a lot of low energy finishes from the same direction). The
winners, in this case, were the ones who got the closest to home at
timeout which required the least altitude to make it home at 0
MaCready. The other poor folk were almost penalised by having to have
the extra altitude (at least 1300 feet per 10 miles they were behind)
to make it home from timeout. What actually happened was that, in
almost every case after this solution was proposed, (due to difficult
task planning requirements of this) the winners made it home before
timeout anyway.

There are other flaws but, as you can see I am not a proponent of this
system.

Dale Kramer
K1




Minor disadvantage or fatal flaw? Actually, the optimal flight ends at
minimum altitude as far downwind of the contest site as you dare.
Then, scratch back home, arriving just as the sun goes down. (Not just
opinion here, but reports from the last club class worlds.) The
contest becomes a crapshoot about whether you pull this off or not.
The min altitude doesn't really help; even a save from 1000' 30 miles
downwind late in the day is a chancy proposition, but a
contest-winning strategy. Then, there's the question, just how much
wind does it take before it's advantageous to go straight downind and
ignore the bonus points? More math problems, and a great task for
motorgliders!

The basic total distance scoring would be very attractive, if only
giders didn't land out every now and then. For now, no one has solved
this basic flaw in the system.

John Cochrane