Reducing collision hazard at contests

To reduce gaggling and aggressive flying in contests, prohibit the use of parachutes. Would this change pilot behaviour, discuss ...

Oh yes Dave it would change pilot behaviour. Nobody would turn up for the competition. That will certainly eliminate any chance of collision.

Clinton

On Monday, May 14, 2018 at 1:08:49 PM UTC-7, Steve Koerner wrote:
Here's a conceptually simple idea for contest pilots to rattle around... I believe it would be highly effective at reducing dangerous big gaggles that happen during contests. The desirables are that it doesn't damage the sport, it's effective at improving safety, it's easy to understand and it's easy to implement.

The idea is inspired by the blog comments from one of the collision pilots at the recent Hahnweide contest where dense gaggles did lead to a mid-air (fortunately in that incident all 3 pilots successfully parachuted).

Let's require flarm log files from all contestants. Let's designate a 1 point penalty whenever a glider comes within 400 feet horizontal and 150 feet vertical of any other glider. For any pair of gliders that come within penalty range, both are docked 1 point without regard to who approached who.. After 5 minutes, the same two gliders will be docked again if they come within penalty range again.

A 400 foot horizontal rule would allow two gliders to safely fly across from one another in a thermal without penalty. Perhaps three gliders could fly together in a thermal if they space out and open the circle. Most likely, though, penalty points would result if more than three gliders attempt to thermal at the same level.

The effect would be to de-motivate gaggle flying. Everyone would want to avoid crowds before the start and on task in order to keep his penalty count low. Pilots would be caused to fly their own machine and think for themselves and that would make for a better test of soaring skill afterall.

That's called a gaggle. You might as well penalize all the pilots before they launch.

Tom

On Monday, May 14, 2018 at 9:56:41 PM UTC-7, 2G wrote:
On Monday, May 14, 2018 at 1:08:49 PM UTC-7, Steve Koerner wrote:
Here's a conceptually simple idea for contest pilots to rattle around.... I believe it would be highly effective at reducing dangerous big gaggles that happen during contests. The desirables are that it doesn't damage the sport, it's effective at improving safety, it's easy to understand and it's easy to implement.

The idea is inspired by the blog comments from one of the collision pilots at the recent Hahnweide contest where dense gaggles did lead to a mid-air (fortunately in that incident all 3 pilots successfully parachuted).

Let's require flarm log files from all contestants. Let's designate a 1 point penalty whenever a glider comes within 400 feet horizontal and 150 feet vertical of any other glider. For any pair of gliders that come within penalty range, both are docked 1 point without regard to who approached who. After 5 minutes, the same two gliders will be docked again if they come within penalty range again.

A 400 foot horizontal rule would allow two gliders to safely fly across from one another in a thermal without penalty. Perhaps three gliders could fly together in a thermal if they space out and open the circle. Most likely, though, penalty points would result if more than three gliders attempt to thermal at the same level.

The effect would be to de-motivate gaggle flying. Everyone would want to avoid crowds before the start and on task in order to keep his penalty count low. Pilots would be caused to fly their own machine and think for themselves and that would make for a better test of soaring skill afterall.

That's called a gaggle. You might as well penalize all the pilots before they launch.

Tom

2G: I don't understand what you are trying to say. Yes, my expectation is that most everybody would probably end up getting at least a few penalty points each day despite trying to avoid flying too close to others. This would not usually
affect results in a significant way -- just a little dither of a few points that would be a function of how attentive you are to the issue.
Steve

Contest have been won by 1 point.

P9

IGC document is an interesting read. Didn't see any reference to
calibration of barometric logger heights. The study used a vertical
encounter threshold of 15M. Most loggers are out by at least this much.

Jim

Duh - skipped right over the horizontal/vertical bit.

I thought about it a bit more.

I could imagine a tactic emerging where teammates further down the scoresheet would hug the closest competitor to their leading teammate to penalize him/her out of contention in the last day or two of a competition. You'd need additional rules to try to judge who's "fault" each penalty is. That might be possible - for instance, penalizing "new" entrants to a thermal. But that might lead to crazy dives to get to the next thermal ahead of the nest competitor(s) and establish a primary position.

Also imagine a couple of gliders in a thermal at the same altitude cracking their airbrakes to block the way of gliders below to let a teammate above get ahead of the group. Yes, it's not very sporting, but certainly unsportsmanlike tactics have been tried. Might need some rules for that to...or maybe people wouldn't try it.

You also wouldn't want people performing crazy maneuvers to clear a conflict without being forced to leave the thermal entirely - zooms, dives, trying to carve across the middle of the thermal to get to the opposite side.

Lastly, people might quibble about not being able to judge these distances very accurately in circumstances where being able to just squeeze in might be important. Would flight computers tell you when you are being penalized? Which flight computers? Software is tough to mandate.

Just noodling.

Andy


On Monday, May 14, 2018 at 6:32:52 PM UTC-5, Steve Koerner wrote:
Andy: Look again at my third paragraph. I did suggest that vertical separation would be different from horizontal. Regardless, I'm not right now picking parameters for this. I just threw out some numbers to make the idea understandable.

"Once upon a time", the rule was "start time = release time". I don't remember hearing much complaints about leeching or gaggles in those times... Only about fairness ;-)

On Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 3:15:06 AM UTC-4, Jim White wrote:
IGC document is an interesting read. Didn't see any reference to
calibration of barometric logger heights. The study used a vertical
encounter threshold of 15M. Most loggers are out by at least this much.

Jim

They talk about that in para 6.4:
"Other enhancements could include:
- Making use of GNSS estimated position error. Note that for vehicles close to each other, they are likely to have similar satellite visibility, subject to similar atmospheric effects, and therefore have similar position error — meaning that their relative separation erroris likely to be smaller than the position error magnitude.
- Making use of expected barometric error due to pressure sensor calibration drift and position error (variation due to cockpit interior static pressure)."

Good rules have the property that it is easy to tell when you are in compliance (or not). Rules of the sort that Steve proposes are troublesome in this regard.

"Oh, but the penalty is small". Yuk. I followed FS through the finish cylinder at Perry, close enough to tell that we were at the same altitude +/- 3 feet. We were lower than we wanted to be having got crushed in the last 3 miles. He finished penalty free, I got docked 20 points (80 feet low). At least I didn't lose 40% of my speed points while still 850' in the air. The gizmos are not as accurate as some presume.

What happens if my flarm fails? DQ for the day? That's going to lead to unhappiness. There were some pretty well known, safety conscious guys flying at Perry that were having flarm problems.

Skeptically,
Evan Ludeman / T8