A thought about handicapping.......

You obviously missed a similar suggestion I made last year. In
English handicapped horse racing, horses carry extra weight based on
their previous performance. It's presumed to make more exciting
racing.

My suggestion was to add drag strips to the gliders of the faster
pilots to slow them down. The better pilots always seem to fly about
10% faster than I do, which is clearly unfair!

As for KS, we should just make him fly a Twin Astir unhandicapped!

Mike

On Sep 25, 7:32*pm, "XYZ" wrote:
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....
Have a handicap card for each pilot airplane combination.
If I can consistantly get 50% of the possible points earned by the days
winner,
I would get a series of normalization factors (2.00) *that over time would
reflect my performance
against the group. *Give me 95% of my normalization history as my handicap
and I'm in with a shot.
If I keep improving, my normalization go's down, If I keep getting killed ,
it go's up.
If Im in a different airplane, I get a different card with different
historical "stuff".
If KS always wins, He always gets a 1.00 and no help. *If a rapidly
improving guy
in good hardware beats him on handicap, KS gets a bit added and the kid gets
a little removed.
It can be a dynamic number that reflects over time, airframe improvements as
well as piloting skill improvements.
It would also prop up aircraft as they age in the hands of people who fly
them a while.

Just a little free thinking to liven up the discussion.

On the other hand, Wouldn't it be cool for Cherokee Boy to be able to win
if he flew his butt off in a contest some time..............
--
Have a great day

Scott

Scott,

We tried this in our NISC (Northern IL Soaring Contest) for a total
of 3 years I believe. Pilot Handicaps were assigned by BB based on
previous results in this season-long Sports Class type contest. The
main idea was to boost participation by new pilots interested in
racing. John Cochrane assigned hugely favorable factors to new pilots
with the result that a newbie won in the first year. There was no
appreciable change in the number of participants, though, same for the
following years.
In fact, the usual suspects won in the following years and scoring
with and without the pilot handicap showed that it didn't make much
difference. The best 8 flights of the year are scored in our contest
and it turned out to be much more effective to enter a flight every
weekend vs. having a favorable pilot handicap.
We did away with the system for this year and actually are having a
very good season with more flights and pilots participating than
ever. I'd be reluctant to reintroduce this concept! Here is a link
to our rules and results:
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.c...h/Papers/#nisc


Herb, J7

On Sep 25, 5:32*pm, "XYZ" wrote:
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....

Suggest you first define the objective of flying in a contest.

If the objective is to make it likely that all pilots have the same
score each day then you could divide up the points by email and cut
out the cost of travel and tows.

Andy

At 16:39 26 September 2008, Andy wrote:
On Sep 25, 5:32=A0pm, "XYZ" wrote:
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....

Suggest you first define the objective of flying in a contest.

If the objective is to make it likely that all pilots have the same
score each day then you could divide up the points by email and cut
out the cost of travel and tows.

And yet that same system hasn't exactly killed golf. Then again when
they play for the money, Tiger Woods doesn't play with a handicap
number.

Jim Beckman

On Sep 26, 1:07�pm, Jim Beckman wrote:
At 16:39 26 September 2008, Andy wrote:

On Sep 25, 5:32=A0pm, "XYZ" �wrote:
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....

Suggest you first define the objective of flying in a contest.

If the objective is to make it likely that all pilots have the same
score each day then you could divide up the points by email and cut
out the cost of travel and tows.

And yet that same system hasn't exactly killed golf. �Then again when
they play for the money, Tiger Woods doesn't play with a handicap
number.

Jim Beckman

"Leach" becomes "Sandbager"....... "Sports Class Rookie" becomes
"Duffer".

"Big Winger" becomes "Long Ball Hitter".

"Land Out" becomes " Muligan".

"UH"...errrrr.. Admiral Nixon that is, becomes "Water Hazard".

"Relight" becomes "Free drop".

"Fly safe" becomes "Clean restrooms", "Handicaps" applied before
takeoff with "bugs and handprints."

SO....."Nothings broke"....means... "we don't need so sinkin
changes"......................


Thermal tight, Soar high, grrrrr...Clean restrooms....... #711.

On Sep 26, 12:07*pm, Jim Beckman wrote:

And yet that same system hasn't exactly killed golf. *

But my interest in soaring contests would probably become equal to my
interest in golf which is zero.

Andy

What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....

That's when I take up golf.

2NO

On Sep 26, 4:19*pm, Tuno wrote:
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft..... *

That's when I take up golf.

2NO

AMEN

We do this as one of our task options at M-ASA. For Grand Prixs, there is a
5 minute handicapp for Cat2 pilots and a 10 minute handicap for Cat1s.

We toyed with the idea of handicapping pilots, but this would require an
application to monitor performance in parallel with scoring. As pilots
improve, they would need to be constantly reassessed.

Another handicapp we've used is egg racing. A Cat 1 or 2 pilot identifies a
Cat 3 pilot and team flies. Both pilots receive the score of the Cat 3
pilot. This can be a lot of fun, and very instructive for both.

"XYZ" wrote in message
. ..
What happens if we handicap pilots instead of aircraft.....
Have a handicap card for each pilot airplane combination.
If I can consistantly get 50% of the possible points earned by the days
winner,
I would get a series of normalization factors (2.00) that over time would
reflect my performance
against the group. Give me 95% of my normalization history as my handicap
and I'm in with a shot.
If I keep improving, my normalization go's down, If I keep getting killed
, it go's up.
If Im in a different airplane, I get a different card with different
historical "stuff".
If KS always wins, He always gets a 1.00 and no help. If a rapidly
improving guy
in good hardware beats him on handicap, KS gets a bit added and the kid
gets a little removed.
It can be a dynamic number that reflects over time, airframe improvements
as well as piloting skill improvements.
It would also prop up aircraft as they age in the hands of people who fly
them a while.

Just a little free thinking to liven up the discussion.

On the other hand, Wouldn't it be cool for Cherokee Boy to be able to win
if he flew his butt off in a contest some time..............
--
Have a great day

Scott

Another handicapp we've used is egg racing. A Cat 1 or 2 pilot identifies a
Cat 3 pilot and team flies. Both pilots receive the score of the Cat 3
pilot. This can be a lot of fun, and very instructive for both.

Continuing the Golf analogy: This sounds like sort of a "Captain's
Choice Best Ball" type tournament...

Having done some lead-follow / team-fly mentoring XC flights with a
experienced pilots this summer I can attest to the fact that its a
great tool and a lot of fun!

But I think it would best be applied in some kind of casual/local-club
competition environment.

I think part of the backlash against many of these suggestions (I
mean, the ones with some merit to them), is that they're being talked
about in terms of USA Regional and National contests - which are more
serious / high-level events.

There's nothing stopping local clubs or groups from defining special
rules and trying these things at their own event!

Take care,

--Noel