SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

Too much b.s. In the name of safety or "fairness", the continued dumbing down of the skill set needed to race. Dump all the finish rules, allow guys to make a flying finish no lower than 200 ft. Or a rolling finish, no penalty. Land short and you get distance points only. Start your motor and you get distance points. Why all the intricacies? There wasn't anything wrong with how we did it 20 years ago.

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 2:56:02 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Too much b.s. In the name of safety or "fairness", the continued dumbing down of the skill set needed to race. Dump all the finish rules, allow guys to make a flying finish no lower than 200 ft. Or a rolling finish, no penalty. Land short and you get distance points only. Start your motor and you get distance points. Why all the intricacies? There wasn't anything wrong with how we did it 20 years ago.

I don't recall a 200' limit back in the good old days. You could scrape gelcoat off on the runway and get a good finish and pull up to buttonhook a pattern.

The only difference was then you didn't have GPS and a glide computer. My recollection was final glides had a lot more buffer on them because you were never 100% sure of your position or the winds so you generally didn't try a best L/D glide from beyond visual range to 0'. Of course glide computers offer more precision than accuracy in these situations, so you can end up in a pickle if you depend on one being that good at predicting the future.

I wrote a computer program to calculate final glides from the ground for the New Zealand Team at the 1983 WGC. The pilots would report distance and we'd estimate winds from the ground and give them height needed to get home. I didn't include any buffer and landed them both out one day a couple of miles short somewhere out in the desert west of Hobbs. Oops!

9B

I was one of the minority who voted for no change. My logic was, assuming most finish cylinders are well positioned and a minimum of 800' agl, you needed at least 600 feet agl to finish and then safely fly a pattern while merging with the existing gliders in the pattern. Below that, I felt it was unsafe flying.

If someone hits the finish cylinder at 400'agl, they will need priority in the pattern, thus creating a mess for those who are already stacked up.

It was pretty eye opening to me to be 7th of 9 in the pattern and have someone finish desperately low and need priority. Luckily, it was a nice wide runway.

Just my $0.02.

Lou

Andy, is there any objective evidence that the safety altitude finish has actually improved safety? Back in the day, we usually had many more entrants and I don’t recall any carnage with the “any where on the airport finish� and it was certainly less stressful on final glide.
Dale Bush

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 4:42:22 PM UTC-5, wrote:
It seems with such harsh penalties one is better off landing out if they are confident of getting home but arriving low.


Kevin?
You have framed the problem here. The current rules conflate a safety issue and a fairness issue and often have unexpected consequences. Frequently the contest site sets a really high finish for good operational reasons. We had a 1400ft one mile finish at one contest. In this case, you got landed out if you finished at 1150ft over the airport! Clearly not a safety issue when they had about 5 power movements each afternoon. If the finish height had been at 400ft then a 150ft finish, other than along the runway, it could be argued to have been unsafe.

Having a linear finish penalty of about twice the points needed to gain the height makes sense and then addressing foolish unsafe finishes as unsafe flying keeps everything fair. The FAI rules use 1 point/m as the penalty and the 200ft SSA penalty is similar at 25 points/100ft. I struggle to see anyone objecting to a 300+ point penalty for someone finishing between the hangars. In FAI contests the unsafe flying penalty is often applied for strange behavior.

Bob Fletcher 90

If the penalty does not scale to the day on a devalued day you could finish the task, arrive low, and have less points then you started the day with. The point penalty vs climb penalty only works if you have a climb to take. We all screw up final glides and if there is no climb to take the prudent thing to do us land out under the point penalty rule as proposed. On a tough day the landout might also help devalue the day further limiting the hit of a landout. You can also miss the finish line and land with an airport bonus which might be tactically prudent but not safe. Penalties like the point scenario are intended to incentivize safety (promoting safety is always worth going after)but very often unintentionally encourage unsafe flying.

As Kev aptly described, it seems like the rules scema actually defeats its proported purpose of enhancing safety. This keeps up the contests become more a "contest" of who can "gam" the rules structure, more than a test of soaring skill.

What's the point of being exacting about the finish when our turns, even on an assigned task, have literal miles of wiggle room (and are scored to the pilot's best advantage)? Surely a minor tuneup to Winscore could choose the optimum finish point for a complete task, anywhere in a 15 mile radius circle.

/s

-Evan Ludeman / T8

On Wednesday, January 3, 2018 at 4:23:33 PM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
What's the point of being exacting about the finish when our turns, even on an assigned task, have literal miles of wiggle room (and are scored to the pilot's best advantage)? Surely a minor tuneup to Winscore could choose the optimum finish point for a complete task, anywhere in a 15 mile radius circle.

/s

-Evan Ludeman / T8

We do get scored to the optimum point, it just happens to be on a 1 or 2 mile radius circle. I've used that wiggle room lots of times to get a bit more distance. Gonna be a little early, finish at the side of the circle.
UH

uh Hank???

11.2.3.3 For completed tasks, the final leg ends at the Finish Point; any finish radius is subtracted from its length.

Sure you can use up another mile worth of time by going to the edge of the finish circle but the way i read it you don't get credit for that distance.

Unless you are flying the 1-26 Championships. They score to entry point of the circle. You can finish in the "back" of the circle. Now that SSA has adopted starting out the back like the 1-26's have done for ever, maybe its time the SSA allows finishing in the back too