Why not say 'for tasks up to 300km in length the turnpoints must be 10km
apart and may not be used more than once'

Ian

"Mike" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:10:53 +0000, K.P. Termaat wrote:

Thanks to people like Ian, Robert, Herbert, Jack, Ruud, Janos and other
respectable guys, I am very much convinced now that it cannot be that an
excellent 1000 km performance is japordized by an FAI rule of which the
true
intention has been fulfilled in a very convincing way.
I am talking again about the 1000 km performance of Ronald Termaat. His
flight can be seen at
http://www.onlinecontest.de/olcphp/2...hp?ref3=119825
The pilot visited the first turnpoint of his 1000 km flight also as his
third turnpoint after having flown a distance of over 800 km in mainly
flat
country and about 7.5 hrs later. "Yoyo-ing" is what FAI says since the
"10
km apart / only once rule" applies and so the 1000 km FAI badge cannot
be
granted. To my opinion there is much more truth in saying that we are
talking here about a prestigious 800 km "out and return" as part of a
still
larger flight rather then a "yoyo".
Flying back and forth several times between two nearby turnpoints to
achieve
a large distance is not very sportif I guess, especially when done in
wave
or along a mountain ridge. So there should be a rule indeed to prevent
that
such a performance is rewarded with a respectable FAI badge. However the
rule should be clever enough to avoid that when "yoyo-ing" is completely
out
of the question, a great performance is still japordized by it.
Is it difficult to have better wordings for a rule then "10 km apart /
only
once" to avoid "yoyo-ing" and not having the desastrous effect on a
great
performance in a "distance flight using up to three turn points"
(1.4.5.b.
of the Code). Not at all to my opinion. The intention of "up to three
turnpoints" in the flight definition is that no more then three times a
turn
point should be visited. Difficult to capture that in a simple rule; not
at
all I guess.
What do you think of a rule like:
"In any sequence not more then up to three visits to declared turnpoints
can
be claimed" replacing the "10 km apart / only once " rule given in
1.4.5.b.
of the Code.

Please give your comments; we are preparing an amendment for the next
meeting of IGC to have this disastrous rule changed. And of course we
like
to give it a ''best shot".

While I don't have my Silver distance yet (I've only been soaring for
about 30 years) I'll comment on this anyway. While doing 800K and
revisiting a turnpoint I'd say that quite a few hours has elapsed
so the weather conditions have most probably changed, thermal sources
have come and gone, wind has shifted or changed strength, visability/
lighting has changed. The revisited turnpoint isn't really the same
as it was the first time there. How about making the rule include some
elapsed time between visits, say 2, 3, or even 4 hours. Heck on my
short local flights I can't go back to a thermal I've been to only 1 hour
ago.

Mike
Ka8 (non-contest MU)
M-ASA