OLC Scoring for 2011

On 10/19/2010 9:53 AM, robert hunter wrote:


That surely shows that tows are within the 15km exclusion. But I
would still like to see the source. Greg, any reference to the OLC
rules themselves, or other, to get the wording? The only doc. I find
is "Friday, October 15
OLC 2011: Foresight into future!"


I think that may be the only source. I don't see this in the rules, but
I could be looking at the wrong place.

Am 19.10.2010 19:13, Greg Arnold wrote:
On 10/19/2010 9:53 AM, robert hunter wrote:


That surely shows that tows are within the 15km exclusion. But I
would still like to see the source. Greg, any reference to the OLC
rules themselves, or other, to get the wording? The only doc. I find
is "Friday, October 15
OLC 2011: Foresight into future!"


I think that may be the only source. I don't see this in the rules, but
I could be looking at the wrong place.

From RULES OLC League 2011 (12.10.2010)
....

4.5 Start Circle

Before the sprint departure point, the powerless flight must begin
within, or pass through, a cylinder with a radius of 15km centered on
the take-off airfield.
....

The reason for this rule is obviously the multiple complains from
participating pilots, (IIRC mainly from Germany) that in the German
"Bundesliga" speed competition it became popular amongst powered glider
pilots to motor into the good weather, start the 2.5h speed task and
eventually glide or motor back to the airfield of their departure, while
pure gliders were not able to achieve this when departing from the same
ore equivalent airfield.

Now with the new rule we suspect the motorglieder pilots will just motor
to an airfield near the good weatrher region, do a quick touch-and-go
there and then start their task within the 15km range of that (new)
starting airfield. This will again be impossible to achieve for pure
gliders.

All in all IMHO a totally silly rule. But as the OLC rules are not
discussed with a larger group of pilots, nor with the German DAeC, we
see no easy way to take influence.

Maybe we will have to start another competition sooner or later...
--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE

On Oct 19, 10:13*am, Greg Arnold wrote:
On 10/19/2010 9:53 AM, robert hunter wrote:



That surely shows that tows are within the 15km exclusion. *But I
would still like to see the source. *Greg, any reference to the OLC
rules themselves, or other, to get the wording? *The only doc. I find
is "Friday, October 15
OLC 2011: Foresight into future!"

I think that may be the only source. *I don't see this in the rules, but
I could be looking at the wrong place.

If there is a reader of German in this group, I request he or she read
the new rules in German, and let us know if towed gliders are
included. From the English version of the 15th announcement, there is
is no indication of applicability to towed gliders. Indeed, the
rationale in that version is to diminish the perceived bump
motorgliders get from propulsion, and that bump is defined as (a)
restarting the engine in flight to get another bite at the apple and
(b) flying far away from home for a start. Arguably, a long tow fits
the (b) condition, but the the fit is not very good; the pure glider
still has to get back on its own, and any glider can take a long tow.

Am 19.10.2010 19:47, robert hunter wrote:
On Oct 19, 10:13 am, Greg wrote:
On 10/19/2010 9:53 AM, robert hunter wrote:



That surely shows that tows are within the 15km exclusion. But I
would still like to see the source. Greg, any reference to the OLC
rules themselves, or other, to get the wording? The only doc. I find
is "Friday, October 15
OLC 2011: Foresight into future!"

I think that may be the only source. I don't see this in the rules, but
I could be looking at the wrong place.

If there is a reader of German in this group, I request he or she read
the new rules in German, and let us know if towed gliders are
included. From the English version of the 15th announcement, there is
is no indication of applicability to towed gliders. Indeed, the
rationale in that version is to diminish the perceived bump
motorgliders get from propulsion, and that bump is defined as (a)
restarting the engine in flight to get another bite at the apple and
(b) flying far away from home for a start. Arguably, a long tow fits
the (b) condition, but the the fit is not very good; the pure glider
still has to get back on its own, and any glider can take a long tow.

the rule 4.5 does not explicitely mention tow flight, neither in the
English or German version:

(German version)
4.5 Startkreis

Vor dem Sprintabflugpunkt muss der antriebslose Flug in einem Zylinder
mit 15km Radius um den Startplatz beginnen beziehungsweise diesen kreuzen.
...........

(English version)
4.5 Start Circle

Before the sprint departure point, the powerless flight must begin
within, or pass through, a cylinder with a radius of 15km centered on
the take-off airfield.
............

So the wording "antriebsloser Flug" can be translated as "powerless
flight", or "flight without propulsion". Common sense would include both
aerotow and selfpowered flights, I guess.
--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE

On Oct 19, 11:08*am, Peter Scholz
wrote:
Am 19.10.2010 19:47, robert hunter wrote:





On Oct 19, 10:13 am, Greg *wrote:
On 10/19/2010 9:53 AM, robert hunter wrote:

That surely shows that tows are within the 15km exclusion. *But I
would still like to see the source. *Greg, any reference to the OLC
rules themselves, or other, to get the wording? *The only doc. I find
is "Friday, October 15
OLC 2011: Foresight into future!"

I think that may be the only source. *I don't see this in the rules, but
I could be looking at the wrong place.

If there is a reader of German in this group, I request he or she read
the *new rules in German, and let us know if towed gliders are
included. *From the English version of the 15th announcement, there is
is no indication of applicability to towed gliders. *Indeed, the
rationale in that version is to diminish the perceived bump
motorgliders get from propulsion, and that bump is defined as (a)
restarting the engine in flight to get another bite at the apple and
(b) flying far away from home for a start. *Arguably, a long tow fits
the (b) condition, but the the fit is not very good; the pure glider
still has to get back on its own, and any glider can take a long tow.

the rule 4.5 does not explicitely mention tow flight, neither in the
English or German version:

(German version)
4.5 Startkreis

Vor dem Sprintabflugpunkt muss der antriebslose Flug in einem Zylinder
mit 15km Radius um den Startplatz beginnen beziehungsweise diesen kreuzen..
..........

(English version)
4.5 Start Circle

Before the sprint departure point, the powerless flight must begin
within, or pass through, a cylinder with a radius of 15km centered on
the take-off airfield.
...........

So the wording "antriebsloser Flug" can be translated as "powerless
flight", or "flight without propulsion". Common sense would include both
aerotow and selfpowered flights, I guess.
--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We can already see from the link Greg provided http://tinyurl.com/26fkt4d
that it applies to tows as well, as many non motorglider flights that
days received 1km/h speed. And this not only show in the OLC league
but also under Speed-OLC. I am aware of few clubs who used the Speed-
OLC score for their own league, which will no longer be possible.

Ramy

I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: How
much does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC -
in terms of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. We may not like
it, but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. :-/

--Noel
P.S. I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:17:07 -0700 (PDT), "noel.wade"
wrote:

I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: How
much does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC -
in terms of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. We may not like
it, but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. :-/

--Noel
P.S. I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Hi Noel,

don't worry - us Germans are much more pi**ed off about the OLC
rulemaking than you guys on your side of the big pond.

So far noone in Germany was able to influence OLC rulemaking, although
quite a few rule changes are necessary to make the majority of gliders
competitive again (the current index calculation clearly favours
gliders with a high index and an engine).


Example:
Taking a closer look, many rules (index calculation, removing of a
return-bonus) are tailor-made for 18m motorgliders, rendering
club-class gliders without an engine chanceless.
These rules were introduced after the OLC guys had bought 18m
self-launchers...



Andreas

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:59:46 +0200, Andreas Maurer wrote:

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:17:07 -0700 (PDT), "noel.wade"
wrote:

I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: How much
does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC - in terms
of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. We may not like it,
but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. :-/

--Noel
P.S. I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards the
operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the exchange
rate the last couple of years!

Hi Noel,

don't worry - us Germans are much more pi**ed off about the OLC
rulemaking than you guys on your side of the big pond.

So far noone in Germany was able to influence OLC rulemaking, although
quite a few rule changes are necessary to make the majority of gliders
competitive again (the current index calculation clearly favours gliders
with a high index and an engine).


Example:
Taking a closer look, many rules (index calculation, removing of a
return-bonus) are tailor-made for 18m motorgliders, rendering club-class
gliders without an engine chanceless. These rules were introduced after
the OLC guys had bought 18m self-launchers...

Maybe if you spoke to John Bridge you could get hold of a copy of the
software used for the BGA league and run your own.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Oct 19, 1:17*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:
I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: *How
much does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC -
in terms of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. *We may not like
it, but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. *:-/

--Noel
P.S. *I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. *However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Noel,

If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

So, the rules are set simply based on: randomly at the whim of the
OLC if no sponsor cares, whatever a sponsor wants or, as Andreas
implied, the personal preference of an OLC principal and their
friends.

Do you see there a paying American sponsor that would care about the
15km rule? I don't.

Similarly, given this is a niche market owned by the OLC, which
has achieved critical mass, we can't expect any further
significant innovation from OLC. Why bother innovating or
improving? The pilots will still upload their flights, the sponsors
will still pay.

Unfortunately, if and when a potential competitor would enter the
arena with innovative solutions to the competitors needs, *then*
the OLC would just copy those quickly. So the new entrant would
have little chance for a little market. Looking forward and reasoning
backwards I don't expect any such competitor to bother. But who
knows, maybe? Open source project?

Until then, seems like we are stuck.

Regards,

David

David wrote:
--Noel
P.S. *I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. *However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Noel,

If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

Also don't forget that the entity you're probably donating to does not
actually run the OLC. There's "Segelflugszene e.V." where donations
go; but they have no influence on the OLC. The OLC is run by
"Segelflugszene gGmbH", which is entirely different, a company founded
and owned (94%) by Reiner Rose. He is the only one to decide. This
company gets all the sponsor money.

Similarly, given this is a niche market owned by the OLC, which
has achieved critical mass, we can't expect any further
significant innovation from OLC. Why bother innovating or
improving? The pilots will still upload their flights, the sponsors
will still pay.

Unfortunately, if and when a potential competitor would enter the
arena with innovative solutions to the competitors needs, *then*
the OLC would just copy those quickly. So the new entrant would
have little chance for a little market. Looking forward and reasoning
backwards I don't expect any such competitor to bother. But who
knows, maybe? Open source project?

Until then, seems like we are stuck.

We have discussed this on a German forum already, there are a number
of problems with the OLC:

- it is not democratic, the OLC does not listen to pilots, Reiner Rose
decides everything. There has been no public discussion about the
new rules. The new rules were made public only a few days before
the season started.

- new rules don't make any sense.

- pilots who criticize the OLC have been banned for being
"unsportsmanlike".

- Reiner Rose has threatened to remove XCSoar from the list of
approved software loggers, because I have criticized the OLC, and I
happen to be member of the XCSoar development team.

- the OLC watches over their data under the disguise of privacy, which
is bull****: every pilot has agreed to publish his IGC files, there
is no privacy which can be protected. The OLC allows IGC file
downloads only for registered users, and only 10 files per day,
threatens to ban users who reach this limit too often (that's really
written in the OLC rules officially!). Even scientific projects
have been denied mass access to IGC files. (If there really was a
privacy problem, then the OLC couldn't allow you to download a
single IGC file)

The list may not be complete, but that's enough reasons why the OLC
needs to be replaced with something better.

I had a look around and saw there were already a number of rivals
(sis-at, xcontest and a dozen of paraglider contests), none of which
had reached the critical mass. My conclusion was that creating yet
another contest wouldn't help, it would fragment the "market" even
more.

My idea: we must undo the fragmentation. We must bring the OLC rivals
together by merging their flight databases. This is the only way to
ever reach the critical mass.

Let's build a global shared IGC file database. Everybody (individual
pilots, sis-at, xcontest and all the others) may upload any number of
IGC files, and the database allows anybody to donwload any number of
IGC files.

Now the daily score of sis-at would include xcontest flights and vice
versa.

Anybody could create charts of thermal sources, collect weather data,
or just anything with those files (given free unlimited access, some
bright minds would surely come up with more clever ideas). Or just
create a new scoring page with new rules. National contests such as
the German DMSt could feed from this database instead of having to pay
OLC.

Everything open source, of course.

Since both the software and the data is "open", anybody could create a
mirror. A dictatorial leadership like in the OLC cannot ever happen,
because everybody has the same rights, no dangerous power
concentration.

Max