On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 4:42:22 PM UTC-5, wrote:
It seems with such harsh penalties one is better off landing out if they are confident of getting home but arriving low.


Kevin?
You have framed the problem here. The current rules conflate a safety issue and a fairness issue and often have unexpected consequences. Frequently the contest site sets a really high finish for good operational reasons. We had a 1400ft one mile finish at one contest. In this case, you got landed out if you finished at 1150ft over the airport! Clearly not a safety issue when they had about 5 power movements each afternoon. If the finish height had been at 400ft then a 150ft finish, other than along the runway, it could be argued to have been unsafe.

Having a linear finish penalty of about twice the points needed to gain the height makes sense and then addressing foolish unsafe finishes as unsafe flying keeps everything fair. The FAI rules use 1 point/m as the penalty and the 200ft SSA penalty is similar at 25 points/100ft. I struggle to see anyone objecting to a 300+ point penalty for someone finishing between the hangars. In FAI contests the unsafe flying penalty is often applied for strange behavior.

Bob Fletcher 90