2008 SSA Contest Rules Meeting Minutes

On Dec 13, 10:54*am, wrote:
Hello Racers & Fans
The minutes of the 2008 meeting of he SSA Competition Rule
Subcommittee are now available on the SSA web site under Sailplane
racing/Rules & Process.
Draft rules changes for review and comment will be available 12/22/08.
UH
H Nixon
SSA Competition Rules Subcommittee Chair

This seems as good a place as any to say THANKS to all you RC guys.

-Evan Ludeman / T8

On Dec 14, 7:17*am, wrote:
On Dec 13, 10:54*am, wrote:

Hello Racers & Fans
The minutes of the 2008 meeting of he SSA Competition Rule
Subcommittee are now available on the SSA web site under Sailplane
racing/Rules & Process.
Draft rules changes for review and comment will be available 12/22/08.
UH
H Nixon
SSA Competition Rules Subcommittee Chair

This seems as good a place as any to say THANKS to all you RC guys.

-Evan Ludeman / T8

Amen - I think most of us feel deep gratitude to those who give back
to the sport so generously.

A little debate is a good thing, and I know most glider pilots like a
LOT of debate.

As a first principle I'd like to see us set out clearly what the
objectives are, then we can try to assess to what extent various
proposals are likely to meet those goals.

I can think of a number of goals:

1) I think the first goal is to choose a national champion - if you
put aside the seeding implications (which I'll address later), this is
mostly a "bragging rights" issue. Ideally, you'd want to beat as many
top pilots as possible for those rights to have the most value. For
the sake of argument, imagine if we had 3, 4, 6, or 12 "nationals"
every year in each class to try to give everyone a "shot" at being a
"sub-national" champion. The more you divide it up, the less the title
means.

There is also the issue of participation. There is an argument that if
you hold more "sub-nationals" you will attract more national-caliber
pilots to those contests. This may be true, but the question is where
will they come from? My guess is they will come either from "out of
class" nationals being held in their region or regional contests. I
doubt that national-caliber pilots will be induced to fly an
additional contest - but you could survey people to see what they'd be
likely to do under specific alternative Regional/National/Sub-National
contest configurations.

2) Another goal is to select a national team. Someone will have to
remind me of the specifics of how seeding points versus nationals
placing are used in deciding this. To the extent that we rely mostly
on seeding over the past three years and there is reasonable "out of
class" opportunity to compete, then I don't think dividing up
nationals helps much. If you are flying 15-meter and have the option
to fly 18-meter (tips or not), then you get three shots in three years
if the nationals are "out of synch" and either 2, or 4 shots if they
are "in-synch". Lastly, to the extent that we want to have multiple
nationals per class it inevitably leads to some comparability problems
- which nationals had the stronger field, etc.

3) A third goal is to maximize the opportunity for pilots to compete
against the top pilots in the country. East-west nationals would
likely lead to competing against a smaller number of the best pilots
in-class in your region since cross-class entries would mostly go
away. You would probably bring in some pilots who would otherwise fly
in regionals, but at the expense of regionals.

4) Lastly, we use contests to award seeding points for a number of
purposes. Fragmenting the nationals would likely up the "luck factor"
of someone winning, or doing well in, a national championship due to
the smaller field. It would also likely compress the seeding list
simply because you have twice and many contests with a 100 factor -
irrespective of the strength of the field.

One issue I see is that the seeding system awards points irrespective
of how strong the the field is. In well-attended contests this isn't
usually a problem, but we increasingly see small fields, especially at
regionals. I think what I might favor (and I've mentioned this before)
is setting the maximum seeding points at any regional contest based on
the overall size and strength of the field. You might go as high as,
say 98 points, so the nationals still have a draw for the very best
pilots to travel or compete "out of class" in a nationals in-region. I
think this is consistent with the intent of super-regionals without
necessarily having to declare one as "super" explicitly. You could
still reserve 50% of the first 10 or 20 slots for some combination of
in-region and newbies, but you would up the value of doing well
against top-seeded pilots for those contests that can attract them.
This is in some ways analogous to what they try to do in college
football, where "strength of schedule" matters in national ranking.
Honestly, I think a lot of the proposals to fragment the nationals or
classes simply makes for awarding more and more trophies of less and
less value.

9B

64% support for a bad idea is still a bad idea. I'm glad the RC went
with what's right and not what's popular.

2NO