On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 6:11:09 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 7:36:09 PM UTC-5, John Foster wrote:
On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 5:23:28 PM UTC-7, mart wrote:
I completely agree that it should be pilot skills and not technology that determines the winners.


Your idea is unfortunately very easy to circumvent, put someone in a car near the end of the runway at launch time with a reciever and write down code and rego.

I would more go for random turnpoints in a circle so that every pilot flies the same distance but you wont know if the pilot you see has done more or less of the task than you did.

I think it could simplify a lot of things if they changed the rules to be more like sailboat racing. The start line opens at a specific time, and whoever crosses the line first is the winner. None of this delayed start stuff. Everyone is racing against each other in real time. The guys behind can see where the leaders are climbing, and maybe make up some time, but in order to win, you have to be in front. Much like they do in SGP racing. That format just makes more sense to me. I realize it is quite a bit different from how things have been done for many years, but it could eliminate a lot of the advantages folks would get from this whole live-tracking thing.

The size of the field matters. SGP has relatively small field intentionally.
I flew in one of the first "bomb burst" starts about 25 years ago. There were about 50 ships, all at cloud base when the go signal was sent. We almost all came back saying that we never wanted to do that again.
This concept also puts everyone in one big gaggle which can be highly dangerous.
Been there - done that.
In my view the solution is to work to make FLARM the collision avoidance tool it is meant to be, and do whatever can be done to stop tracking and minimize the benefits of FLARM radar. Start with option for no ID. Kill climb rate information. Make range only what it needs to be for collision avoidance. Stealth does some of this.
UH

I would agree that the size of the field matters. What would the maximum size field be that you would consider safe? How much smaller is that than current class sizes in current US contests? For a world championship contest, it could be run much like a swim meet, or other such contest where you have qualifying races with elimination rounds followed by a final race. That would be quite different than how we do things today, but I think we could take a lot from how the sport of sailing does things. They also have to deal with safety issues with mass starts and traffic and changing weather conditions across the course and throughout the day. I think that this kind of format could fix many of the issues (not all though) we are wrestling with.