Absurdity of US Rules (in fairness to FAI)

On Tuesday, August 13, 2013 10:21:55 AM UTC-7, Luke Szczepaniak wrote:
Evan, this is exactly the answer I got when I brought it up two years
ago. Regardless of how I fly the other guys in the start cylinder are
still doing this. It will continue to happen until we replace the rules
with something even more complex, in the name of "safety" of course.

A decade or so ago, when this rule first showed up, I added some code to my Palm (remember those?) navigation software that used tones to indicate when I entered the cylinder (from the top or side), warned me if my airspeed was getting too high or if I was about to exit cylinder before the 2 minutes were up, let me know when I could safely proceed from wherever I was to exit, and as I exited whether it was a good or bad start. There was nothing to look at except the other gliders and an occasional glance at the moving map so I could position myself for a reasonably optimal exit. I assume modern nav software written with US rules in mind does pretty much the same thing, but better. The only issue was that if there was one or two strong thermals in the cylinder, there would be a bunch of gliders climbing up, some rolling out and pulling spoilers to avoid going through the top, while others would keep on climbing through the top. I was never into flying with the pack, I imagine those that do will have interesting problems at start, no matter what the rules happen to be.

It seems to me that these "other" pilots just need to be strongly encouraged not to do it wrong...

Marc