What was wrong with the good old days, you ask? Answer, about every other year a major accident involving low energy at the finish or crashes one or two miles from the airport. Numbers here

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...est_safety.ppt

Memories fade, don't they.

Where they still allow this stuff, the crashes go on. Szeged 2010 was particularly memorable for me because I was there. A glider on low slow final glide hit a truck driving on the airport boundary road. Last few mile crashes continue under IGC rules.

Uvalde 2017 decided to go back to the fun times of the good old days with finish line and rolling finishes allowed. Great stuff on the strong days. Then came the rain days, and only miracles saved us from a major crash. Go look at the traces. Multiple extremely low energy arrivals, including one that reportedly did a ballistic below stall speed trajectory over the final row of trees before the airport.

I love the attitude here. The task has a start gate, turnpoints, and a finish gate. The start and finish have altitude limits. If you don't make them, you haven't completed the task. Really, guys, would you go do a running race, miss the finish line, but demand to be counted because you made it to the locker room? If you miss the start gate do you demand a valid race because you took off at the same airport as everyone else? It's nice of RC to give us graduated soft penalties in the first place. IGC doesn't do that -- prepare to start whining when you miss the start, turn, or finish by one meter. Now you miss the finish line by 400 feet and that's not enough? Buck up and fly the task, and if you can't complete the task take your medicine. The task ends at the finish gate, not at the airport. Just because tasks ended at the airport 30 years ago doesn't mean they do anymore.

John Cochrane