On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 9:05:42 AM UTC-7, Steve Leonard wrote:
On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 8:05:10 AM UTC-5, wrote:

Sean, There is the nature of soaring, and then there is gross unfairness. To have someone starting 10,000' above you 15 minutes after the last launched rolled is absurd. On weak low days the CD has the potential to delay the task opening to allow the last launchers time to get to a reasonable altitude. Attempts at a fair start can and should be made. Open class has no gaggle to loose and some of us don't fly with gaggles in 18m and 15m, so the "unfairness" is simply an altitude issue. Richard Walters



I have been last off, and 6 or 7 of the 15 minutes were spent on tow because of a weak towplane and not finding any lift to get off in. Finally got off at 2K AGL in a measly weak thermal. I now have 8 or 9 minutes to climb 6000+ feet and fly to the front half of the start cylinder because the drop zone is not even in the start cylinder for the day. It is not so much the weak, low days that can make an unlimited height start unfair. It is the taller days. Where thermals are farther apart. And as others have pointed out, there may only be one good thermal in the front half of your cylinder.



I am with Rick. Limited start height is good. Option to climb out the top or run out the side is good. We need to educate pilots that it is much easier and more effieicent to stay 500 or even 1000 feet below the top until you are ready to climb out the top, if that is your choice. Why? Do you really think you can "feel" the thermal running around at 100 knots with your dive brakes out 100 feet below the top of the cylinder? If you are well below the top of the cylinder, you don't need to be watching the altimeter. Leave. Cruise around a bit. Get back into the thermal and give yourself time to get centered before going out the top. Your climb rate will be better from the time you actually do start until you leave that first climb..



As with so many other rules, pilot behavior can and will test the edges of any rule. You the pilot can choose to make the rule safe or dangerous.



Just my 2 cents.

Steve Leonard

The simple implication of raising the start height is to increase the time lag from last launch to gate open. For starts up to 17,500, just accounting for tow time, search time and climb time in a thermal that is 2 standard deviations below the mean in strength you'd be talking 45 minutes to an hour depending under typical circumstances - and that's under pretty much ideal conditions in terms of a pilot finding a climb. That's what you'd need to do if you want to let the last guys on the grid get up to start height. Much shorter and you run a big risk of most of the field heading out on course while the last guys off the grid are still climbing.

This may not be all that desirable, depending on the day. You only rarely see pilots getting a floor to ceiling climb right out of the start cylinder, so it might be preferred to let people get out on course and get up to altitude over a few climbs rather that ensuring by rule that most everybody can make a full climb to cloud base first.

I've also been thinking that a lower speed limit in place of the two minute rule might be hard to enforce and would certainly lead to some unhappiness for pilots who get caught in the speed trap, just due to inherent imprecision in estimating IAS off of a flight log.

Since I got my integrated two minute timer in both my computers I am less concerned about the timing workload. Also, the analysis I did a couple of years ago comparing starts through the top of the cylinder versus the edge (before versus after the rule changed) showed a very significant reduction in pre-start congestion and gaggling.

9B