Hobbs 2019 18M/Open Nats. Contest Day 4 6/23

Hobbs, 2019 18M/Open Class Nats: Day 4 6/23 Pretty good conditions per wx. man QV. Mostly blue, best chance of cu to the south, 5 knot lift 14000 bases and a slower start predicted for today. 290 mile Assigned task is primary. posted by Leigh
Mabee Ranch
Littlefield
Tatum
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Hi, thanks for info.......
Appreciate the year in the title for "down the road" searches.
Hope they have better conditions than Ohio.....saw they pushed back due to.....ummmm....."weather".......
Condolences to those from that region.....

Task change in the air: Task B 3:30 TAT Gate opened at 13:45
CD will "paint" the task on the SSA contest tracking site

Interesting scoresheet today with so many near max distance and so many under time.

I will have to put pen to paper tomorrow but I think the results would be very different if we still had the pre 2017 undertime factor rule that was deleted for "simplicity".

It appears the winning strategy today was to start out the back of the cylinder to absolutely maximize the possible distance.

I got a chance to build a spreadsheet. I only looked at the Open Class because it is a smaller group. With the pre-2017 Under Time Factor rule, Dave Mockler would've gotten credit for his actual 82+ MPH speed on course instead of getting his speed artificially lowered to 76.6 mph. Jim Lee would've been 80.5 instead of 75 and Dick Butler would've gotten 75 instead of 72. By the way I used Dave's achieved 266 miles on task as the maximum task distance because the WinScore provided max distance was 259 (artifact of starting out the back?).

Anyway...With the pre-2017 UTF rule there is a wider spread in speed on course, and hence a wider point spread. The result is that everyone else but Dave would've had fewer points. Here's the point difference between pre-2017 and 2017+ rules

8K 0
1C -10.3916705
DB -28.24863633
SS -43.87305119
DT -54.34947969
VJS -63.30665151
7V -59.1707459
MAL -63.3602451
8H -49.39578228
N1K -62.16951603
HW -61.37768677
SZ -60.36772464
F8 -58.74528345

With the current rule on a day like this, there is basically a bonus to flying slower. I personally am not a fan of getting more points for flying slower.