contest corner

On Dec 26, 12:31*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
JJ Sinclair wrote:
*I do like calling a
whole bunch of turns, so many that some wont be able to do them all
and will be forced to quit and head home when their time's up. Call it
JJ's AT, a way to *call an assigned task in sports class.
Happy, Happy
JJ

I don't fly contests anymore, but I would have enjoyed Sports Class a
lot more with JJ running it! I preferred AT much more than the Sports
Class "do your own thing" task, because DYOT is what I did when I wasn't
flying a contest. I liked contest flying much more when the AT was the
standard, because it was _different_ from my usual flying. Why put up
with the hassle and cost of a contest to do exactly what I always do?

Eventually (after 28 years), I quit contest flying because it was
interfering with my soaring.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly


I, too, have not done any contest flying for the past few years. And I
liked
contests.

It seems to me that we should decide on what properties we would like
to reward, those we would least encourage, and those we would
penalize. Try this. Make a list.

money
risk tolerance
weather forecasting
weather assessment
flying skill
rule reading

I'd bet that rule reading would end up low on the reward list, but
ends up being
one of the primary requirements for contest success. Another would
probably
be money, low on reward list, primary for contest success. How about
risk?
Do we want to encourage this?

Dennis Brown LY

On Dec 27, 6:32*am, n7ly wrote:
On Dec 26, 12:31*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:





JJ Sinclair wrote:
*I do like calling a
whole bunch of turns, so many that some wont be able to do them all
and will be forced to quit and head home when their time's up. Call it
JJ's AT, a way to *call an assigned task in sports class.
Happy, Happy
JJ

I don't fly contests anymore, but I would have enjoyed Sports Class a
lot more with JJ running it! I preferred AT much more than the Sports
Class "do your own thing" task, because DYOT is what I did when I wasn't
flying a contest. I liked contest flying much more when the AT was the
standard, because it was _different_ from my usual flying. Why put up
with the hassle and cost of a contest to do exactly what I always do?

Eventually (after 28 years), I quit contest flying because it was
interfering with my soaring.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

I, too, have not done any contest flying for the past few years. And I
liked
contests.

It seems to me that we should decide on what properties we would like
to reward, those we would least encourage, and those we would
penalize. Try this. Make a list.

* * * * *money
* * * * *risk tolerance
* * * * *weather forecasting
* * * * *weather assessment
* * * * *flying skill
* * * * *rule reading

I'd bet that rule reading would end up low on the reward list, but
ends up being
one of the primary requirements for contest success. Another would
probably
be money, low on reward list, primary for contest success. How about
risk?
Do we want to encourage this?

Dennis Brown *LY


I think the the one attribute that discourages the most pilots is
available time - both for practice and to participate in contests.
It's why you see many competition pilots either have lots of schedule
flexibility (retired, have their own businesses, professional pilots
(not so true anymore)), or devote nearly all their free time to the
sport (many of these don't have kids at home). It used to be that
soaring contests were more of a family affair, but less so now.

I hear all the comments about complex rules and in all honesty don't
fully agree. Yes they are long and the wording can be a bit
convoluted, but they are designed to make it so that there is no
advantage to be gained in finding strategies to game the rules or
trade safety for points. The extra wording is to close loopholes that
schemers could take advantage of. Pretty much all you need to do is:
1) Get to the grid on time and do what officials tell you to do, 2)
Know how to put a task in your computer, 3) Stay below max start
height for 2 minutes before you start, 4) Start from the front half of
the start cylinder AFTER the start opens, 5) Fly to the assigned
turnpoints in the assigned order (and pick 11 or fewer on a MAT), 6)
Stay away from controlled/restricted airspace, 7) Get back as fast as
you can (but over the minimum time on TATs and MATs), 8) Finish above
minimum finish height, 9) Turn in your flight log promptly after you
land.

Maybe there are a couple of other rules worth knowing, but mostly they
correspond to common sense. For instance, you should try to land out
at an airport if there is one you can get to. In that case you get an
airport bonus for doing the sensible thing. I'd rather have the rule
than wonder how many points I am losing by turning back to an airport
instead of doing a straight glide on course until touchdown. A second
example is the penalty for finishing below minimum finish height -
without the a pilot can make perhaps 50 points on the field by
managing a final glide so they run out of speed and altitude right at
the finish line. In these cases and many others the extra wording in
the rules makes it so that I don' t have to do mental math in the air
to tradeoff points versus safety margins - doing the right thing
doesn't carry a point penalty.

I haven't read the rules cover-to-cover since 2003 - seriously. I do
read the changes every year - takes maybe 30 minutes. Generally the
changes make life easier. A lot of the details are for contest
managers and CDs to know, but aren't necessary to know in order to
compete effectively. We could author a "plain English" version of the
rules without the formulae that simply explains what the rule is
intended to accomplish/encourage/discourage. Without that you have to
either read and understand the rules or take it on faith that you
don't have to understand all the calculations to compete effectively.

9B

On Dec 27, 10:16*am, Andy wrote:
I haven't read the rules cover-to-cover since 2003 - seriously. I do
read the changes every year - takes maybe 30 minutes. Generally the
changes make life easier. A lot of the details are for contest
managers and CDs to know, but aren't necessary to know in order to
compete effectively. *We could author a "plain English" version of the
rules without the formulae that simply explains what the rule is
intended to accomplish/encourage/discourage. Without that you have to
either read and understand the rules or take it on faith that you
don't have to understand all the calculations to compete effectively.


As proof that I haven't read the rules since 2003, I just noticed that
the rules do have a "plain English" explanation of sorts. Appendix A
explains the logic behind each rule without all the formulae and
nomenclature. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

The rules for FAI Regionals are 43 pages long, but the rules
themselves are actually 29 of those pages - the remainder is the
"plain English" translation and some other details. Out of the 29
pages, 15 apply to the contest organizers (CM and CD) and 5 apply to
the scorer (or scoring program writer). This means that 9 pages of
rules apply specifically to pilots (or 4 pages of the "plain English"
Appendix). If if you spend 5 minutes per page that's less than an hour
each year. Is it really that big a burden?

9B