SSA 2018 Rules Finish Penalty

Lou,
In some respects we have let racing become a little too tempered here in the US, where a low finisher's pattern impact is eye-opening. In Lithuania Adam Czeladzki showed me what a finely-tuned final glide looks like as he gained a few minutes on me in the last 20 km: https://www.facebook.com/ecc.czeladz...user_video_tab

I'm not advocating for these direct landing or rolling finishes at SSA contests but it helps put into context that finishing at 600ft is perhaps some way from a "zero speed points" safety issue at gliding only locations.

Bob Fletcher 90

What was wrong with the good old days, you ask? Answer, about every other year a major accident involving low energy at the finish or crashes one or two miles from the airport. Numbers here

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...est_safety.ppt

Memories fade, don't they.

Where they still allow this stuff, the crashes go on. Szeged 2010 was particularly memorable for me because I was there. A glider on low slow final glide hit a truck driving on the airport boundary road. Last few mile crashes continue under IGC rules.

Uvalde 2017 decided to go back to the fun times of the good old days with finish line and rolling finishes allowed. Great stuff on the strong days. Then came the rain days, and only miracles saved us from a major crash. Go look at the traces. Multiple extremely low energy arrivals, including one that reportedly did a ballistic below stall speed trajectory over the final row of trees before the airport.

I love the attitude here. The task has a start gate, turnpoints, and a finish gate. The start and finish have altitude limits. If you don't make them, you haven't completed the task. Really, guys, would you go do a running race, miss the finish line, but demand to be counted because you made it to the locker room? If you miss the start gate do you demand a valid race because you took off at the same airport as everyone else? It's nice of RC to give us graduated soft penalties in the first place. IGC doesn't do that -- prepare to start whining when you miss the start, turn, or finish by one meter. Now you miss the finish line by 400 feet and that's not enough? Buck up and fly the task, and if you can't complete the task take your medicine. The task ends at the finish gate, not at the airport. Just because tasks ended at the airport 30 years ago doesn't mean they do anymore.

John Cochrane

John,
You always have great insight. However, any issues with the Uvalde finish in the rain were related to it being 4500' along a 6000' runway rather than in its middle. A few people failed to notice this until finishing and discovered lots of value in their landing flaps.

If the finish line was in the middle of the 6000' runway it's hard to see that a 10 - 500' finish height would be a problem - just land ahead.

The last Worlds I flew transitioned from the zero height finish line to a finish circle with a 200m finish at 5km, which was just fine especially with its 1 point/m low finish penalty.

My only issue with the SSA 800ft finish with its 400ft landout cut-off is the excessive penalty between 400ft and 600ft which is about equivalent to being an hour late on a racing day.

Bob Fletcher 90

Why? the task ends at 800'. 600', ok maybe that's an honest mistake. 400' low means you really did not finish this task.

John, hate to say it, but crashes are innevitable when people with large egos are involved in any sort of racing. We will never be able to "legislate" absolute safety, and guys will forever take risks to win. Sure some rule making is common sense based. But, there is an ever increasing trend to try to substitute rules for experience. It has never worked.

A close look at your very own data in the link you posted shows that the accidents that were fatal were stall spin. Anyone who has a smiggen of aeronautical sense, if screwing up a final glide and running out of options, will put there ship down straight ahead, you gotta work hard at killing yourself setting your ship down even into the trees if it is done in a controlled fashion. Two of the accidents were stall spin while trying to do a pattern, most likely while low, another screw up totally preventable.

As your data shows, the greatest combined source of accidents is found in off field landings and midairs. If that is the case, where are all the rules/regs to mitigate those accidents? I think what no one wants to say is accidents close to the field are publicity attractors, negative that is, and the concern is about our image and possible FAA intervention.

Yes we had fatalities during the "good old days " 70's-80's-90's. I witnessed a few myself, but things are not safer now. That is a fallacy. We had 60 sometimes 70 sailplanes racing a single national and absolutely huge regionals as well. We have 1/3 of that now with an accident rate that has not decreased in pace with the shrinking participation. Racing has not gotten safer. There is so much inner cockpit distraction and blind dependance on, at times, overly optomistic flight computers, that guys are stretching way beyond their natural abilities, much more so than when we had to make educated guesses based on what our asses were telling us.

A very good case can be made emphatically and statistically that racing is more dangerous today, due to the above mentioned point as well as the fact that performance has progressed to the point where an off field landing is such a rare occurrence guys do not have the experience level they need in their ship to safely make an off field landing, which used to be a normal occurrence in any contest.

To incentivize finishing above a certain height there should be s bonus and not a penalty. A landing at the airport has the potential for a full points finish. Hit the finish cylinder above a certain height gains a bonus. Punitive measures encourage gaming to avoid the hit which often results in unsafe behavior the rule is intended to discourage.

Kev, I really like that concept. That seems a much easier and more "encouraging" way to go about encouraging a different flying mindset.

John, I hear your arguments and appreciate the sentiment. But you know as well as I do that accidents do happen and will continue to happen every year no matter what new or old or innovative rules or penalties we adopt, be it high finish, low finish or no finish. Stupidity can't be regulated. If we are going to regulate/ penalize finishes to these draconian levels, why not regulate proximity within gaggles, penalize any saves below 800 ft, penalize low drag flying off the wing tip vortices of a competitor, limit task finish times to under 3 hours per day because multiple "long" days creates fatigue, the list becomes endless.

In addition, the competition degrades from a test of "soaring" skill, to one of "system/scoring management.

I don't race anymore (primarily because of issues just like the one in this thread), so I am just an interested observer. The issues should be settled completely, solely by those who are actively racing today. In addition, member of the RC should be required to race at least two regionals per year to remain on the committee, and direct polling of only the racing community should determine what U.S. racers want for their races irregardless of its affect on Worlds. The Worlds are a completely seperate issue and involve only a few guys who can train however they need to in order to be competitive there.

This is simply not true. Crashes are not inevitable. When there is a huge points advantage to clearing the fence by 10 feet and plopping it down for a rolling finish, people will do it. The crash results prove it. The high finishes have essentially cured the longstanding problems. Be clear: the issue is not low high speed finishes. The issue is the possibility, and hence the competitive necessity, to accept Mc 0 + 10 feet final glides, and the consequent last minute 1-2 mile out landings, or last minute low energy maneuvering at the airport. If the rules allow it, and you don't do it, you will lose contests.

BTW, I finished 250 feet low at Uvalde, it largely cost me the contest, and I'm not complaining. Yes it was a safe approach to the airport. But I did not make the task.

John Cochrane

On Monday, January 1, 2018 at 8:00:28 PM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
This is simply not true. Crashes are not inevitable. When there is a huge points advantage to clearing the fence by 10 feet and plopping it down for a rolling finish, people will do it. The crash results prove it. The high finishes have essentially cured the longstanding problems. Be clear: the issue is not low high speed finishes. The issue is the possibility, and hence the competitive necessity, to accept Mc 0 + 10 feet final glides, and the consequent last minute 1-2 mile out landings, or last minute low energy maneuvering at the airport. If the rules allow it, and you don't do it, you will lose contests.

BTW, I finished 250 feet low at Uvalde, it largely cost me the contest, and I'm not complaining. Yes it was a safe approach to the airport. But I did not make the task.

John Cochrane

I agree with John. If you cannot with reasonably certainty nail a 1000 ft high finish line to avoid a penalty, by the same logic you cannot with reasonably certainty nail a rolling finish to avoid death. The flying skills required in either case are identical - only the consequences are different. To assert otherwise is completely illogical. In fact, allowing low finishes replaces skill with risk taking as the major competitive advantage in final glides. The idea that "airmanship" or "experience" are the difference is specious: accepting a lot of risk and finding a little luck will put you on the podium ahead of someone whose greater experience informs him that it is not worth the risk. A high finish removes the risk and makes only experience and skill count.

The attitude of many here seems to be that soaring is inherently a risky sport, so don't bother with making it less so. I can tell you that where I fly, the most often mentioned reason among fellow pilots for not flying contests is that it is too risky - competition rewards risk and to be competitive they would need to fly with higher risk of a crash than they would otherwise. For those who want glider competition to just be about who will take the greatest risk, there are many other sports that offer that attraction.