Starts Procedures ; Proposal

On Saturday, February 2, 2019 at 3:51:53 PM UTC-7, John Cochrane wrote:
These proposals make a fundamental mistake. In current WGC flying, it is vitally important to start with the fast gaggle. If you don't you're toast. These proposals make it harder to accomplish the optimal start -- but do nothing to reduce the incentive to start with the gaggle. That will just make a high stress high intensity moment even more high stress and high intensity. Literally, when you push the PEV, you're making the single most important decision of the day. If you push it at the wrong time, and the Kawa express leaves without you, well, the day is over and done before it starts. Now doesn't that sound like fun. So what do you do? Focus even more intense attention on the start! Get ground helpers listening in Polish and analyzing the trackers to figure out what everyone else is doing. And in this proposal, keep all that going for three PEV cycles. Boy does that sound like fun..

The first answer, as I see it, is to lower the vital importance of flying with the gaggle. The US scoring proposal before IGC will help a lot with that -- though it will not be a miracle either.

Second, yes, really the only way I can see to do this, without massively increasing the pre-start workload, is with an assigned start time or start interval. When bicycles don't want drafting tactics, they use a time trial.. It's not the end of the world. It can be flexible, with a 5 minute interval and later starts valid, just counted as starting at the last start time.

John Cochrane
BB

That assigned start time works for cycling because the weather doesn't have (as much) an effect on the performance as it does with soaring. Conditions can change dramatically over the course of an hour or so, and this can make a much bigger difference to a glider pilot than a time-trialist. Not saying that cycling is immune to the weather, but just not to the same extent as with soaring.