OLC scoring - USA

I made a few attempts to get my club to adopt a UK like ladder system
over the past few years, without success. The UK clubs often
established a club ladder, best four flights, as an annual trophy
recognition. The BGA also had a couple of national ladders, one for
weekend only flights and the other for weekday flights. These were
very popular and an inspiration for XC flying. The OLC is a 21st
century iteration of this.

I don't have any problem with the SSA regional filter as it probably
aids those sites that are borderline with other regions. Haven't
checked to see if there are any anomalies. A state filter would assist
me, and other governors, in the role of governor in presenting soaring
to the general Colorado public and deciphering annual OLC awards. I've
posted to the 'governors' group to see how and if others have made
these awards. Possibly the SSA will give regional or national
recognition at some point in the forms of certificates. Trophies are
probably out as official SSA trophies require sizable endowments. It
took several years before the Sports Class Nationals trophy became a
reality. I agree Bill, there is some gee-whiz value here.

FWIW, our Colorado record keeper holds 10 state records (from diverse
sites, see Mr. January on the 2006 SSA Calendar), 17 Wyoming records
(same region) and 13 Nebraska records (different region). The WY and
NE records were all flown from our club in Colorado. So I can
appreciate how some sites are looking at the regional mapping,
especially if soaring just over the boundary may be greener. But these
flights and OLC are mixing apples and oranges presently.

My club hasn't taken an official stand WRT OLC and our fleet is not yet
logger equipped. It's mostly economics, and partly member awareness.
Though a private owner, I'd like to see the club ships that are likely
to go XC so equipped.

Mapping states is not necessarily trivial, having done some lat/lon and
grid ref conversions encompassing the 0 meridian when helping develop
software during 1993 and 1994 for task setting and doing logging
analysis. Colorado, one of the rectangular states, is easy. States
with river boundaries are something else again.

OLC is still in its infancy. Use will change somewhat. The criteria I
used this year will undoubtedly change in the future, but we also have
to look forward to other awards based on OLC performance. One change
in 2005 (50km minimum distance) resulted in one club in our state to
stop posting, as they have about 8 1-26's in the private and club
fleet. The bar appears to have been raised a little too high. I know
of some more senior pilots that aren't posting though they do manage a
lot of soaring and some impressive flights, but somehow they haven't
bought into the process yet. So we need to win them back and I really
think the state filter might help there also. Anyway, I'll get with
Chip on this.

There is a cost per pilot associated with OLC participation. SSA would
rather support this through an advertising stream rather through member
fund or charges. Aerokourier has a cost for hosting and bandwidth, but
is not charging for the service, but will need some revenue to keep it
running.

It will be interesting to see if the FAI 28% triangle fit will change
the type of flying done this year.

Frank Whiteley

Frank Whiteley wrote:

One change
in 2005 (50km minimum distance) resulted in one club in our state to
stop posting, as they have about 8 1-26's in the private and club
fleet. The bar appears to have been raised a little too high.

This may not be as it seems, despite the fact OLC have stated just that
on their web page.

For both 2005 and 2006 flights scoring at least fifty _points_ are
apparently counted. Shorter flights are also displayed. I wonder if
perhaps the explanation on the OLC site is as clear as it might be on
that min. distance v min. points. It lacks considerable clarity on much
of the inner workings of the OLC. I put this down to the language
barrier, German/English, and not any lack of effort.

Consequently those 1-26 drivers should take heart, since their handicap
rating of 63 gives a minimum scoreable flight of fifty points with an
actual scoreable flight distance of only 31.5k. Not that tough, even
here in N. IL. When they go to higher L/D gliders then they'll have to
fly even more than 50k to get those fifty points.

Examples from the current 2006 season:

Iten, Brian flew 55.38km for 46.69 pts in a Discus (DAeC index or
"handicap" of 108). The entry is grayed-out on the page indicating that
the flight is "displayed but not counted" http://tinyurl.com/akkyz

Herrmann, Jim flew 36.52km for 52.1 points in a 1-26D/E (DAeC index or
"handicap" of 63). The entry is black text indicating "scored and
counted". http://tinyurl.com/9nh2z

As always, corrections to the above are encouraged.


Jack

Hi Frank,

I would love it if it were possible to list all flights from (for example)
Minnesota. I hosted a contest in 2005 in Minnesota and it was somewhat
difficult to extract data for all flights that originated in MN. That would
make it even more fun than it already is in my opinion. To find the data I
had to know which pilot had submitted OLC flights. I was then able to
generated a spreadsheet manually by looking at lists of flights by each
pilot. The competition I sponsored also compared flights from specific
soaring sites. That was tough because some of the pilots flew from multiple
locations and submitted flights to the 1-26 Association. In the end I was
able to use the spreadsheet to compare the flights from the 3 gliderports,
but it was not easy. It would be awesome to be able to see a total of all
flights that originated from a particular soaring site.

The contest I sponsored for 2005 is shown he
http://www.soarmn.com/cumulus/olc-mn.htm

Good Soaring,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.
http://www.cumulus-soaring.com

"Frank Whiteley" wrote in message
oups.com...
Personally, I don't know why we are using regional filters at all
unless someone in the SSA is planning on regional records/awards. But
those are not in evidence at this point. Since the SSA has the rights
to the US OLC, I'd like to know who requested the regional queries and
what the plans are. It's worthy of discussion. If this is posted
somewhere, point me there please.

I did award state OLC trophies this year and would appreciate some
selectable state filters to isolate flights originating here,
terminating here, or both. However, I can import pilot flights into a
spreadsheet or database and filter appropriately, just takes extra time
and effort. Criteria for last year were Colorado starts. This
eliminated those flights in Uvalde, Hobbs, and Parowan which might have
skewed things a bit here and there. I also included all Colorado
flights, rather than the top six, as the top six led to additional
skewing to particular sites. Including all flights showed pilot
effort, even though there was little difference in the total number of
flights among the best pilots after the out of state flights were
removed. The regional query also removes flights outside the region,
so it misses what some pilots based within the region may be doing. I
guess the question is where to draw the lines and why. I found the
regional query useless.

Frank Whiteley
SSA Governor Colorado

The airfield statistics will help some, but they need to be "clickable"
so that all flights from a particular takeoff site are available in a
single page for further analysis.This is already possible with club
statistics.

Make your wishes known to the OLC folks and if the demand is there,
they will respond. I just got the name "Kelly1" changed to a much more
usable "Kelly Airpark" for the home airport of the Black Forest Soaring
Society http://soarBFSS.org

-Tom