Contest Class Development for Future Success - The Case fordeveloping the Handicapped Classes

I enjoy contests as well as OLC flying, even though I am not typically competitive. The challenge of flying a fixed course with other sailplanes is fun and quite different from free flying.

However, there are a few things I don't like.

1) Like many pilots today, I am usually without a crew, so it is a challenge to get ready and grid every day and land outs are more of a hassle, even with lots of colleagues to help. This doesn't get any easier as we get older! All of this effort can be a chore when soaring conditions are not so good.

2) The delays in launching a grid and hanging around for a start often mean a sizeable chunk of the soaring day has passed before the start of a race.

3) The rules are getting ever more complex and include some really baffling ones as well as those with unintended consequences.

I suspect these and similar reasons are why existing pilots are competing less. Also, with the economy down, it is only us richer guys (probably top 5% of the income earners) who can afford both the expense and time to attend.

Mike

Great, great points again. I agree. We need a pivot. Its going to be scary for the establishment, but its time.

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 1:10:05 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Sean, et al:



I totally get the appeal of a grand prix race. I'd likely show up for one, depending on who is flying. I personally prefer distance racing, but hey, that's me. Where I think we can agree is that we're not running nearly enough experiments to find new and popular racing formats.



We seem to be running the same experiments, with small tweaks by the rules committee, hoping for a very different outcome. In the lingo of start-up culture, it's time for a pivot.



I applaud what Bruno and Tim have done at Nephi (and I really wished I could have gone this year). They've clearly found a format that is so popular as to have been over subscribed. It doesn't matter if it meets an arbitrary definition of a "true race", it got plenty of attendance in a pretty damn remote part of the country. They're clearly on to something.



I have read (too many times) that the rules committee will give waivers to try different things at a regional level, and if it's popular they'll consider adopting it at a nationals level. But this is a very slow approach to innovation, and it sure doesn't look like we have decades to figure this out folks.



In my opinion the gliding community is very risk adverse and slow to change. We like rules. We like organization. We like to presume there is a correct way to do things. We're all a bunch of pundits, but in the meantime our sport is dying because it has become so insular and clique-ish.



For years it seems like the focus has been on optimizing for a local maximum that incrementally improves attendance at, say, a standard class nationals, rather than searching for another format(s) that are compelling enough to get competitors to make the extra effort to participate. Clearly the data shows this isn't working. I'll tend to think that the racing scene needs two things to occur to change it's death spiral:



(1) It needs to be far more inviting to new racing pilots. Doing this almost certainly will require simplified formats, with shorter races, and a strong social activity component to help new pilots develop relationships with established pilots. Right now this is handled at the regional level, that's a mistake if you want to develop a strong national racing scene.



(2) We need *way* more experimentation occurring in the sport to increase the probability that we discover a growth opportunity. Again, this has been pushed down to the regional level. Instead, why doesn't the SSA rules committee promote several new race format concepts each year and see which ones get traction?



Alternatively, we can have an endless discussion on RAS that makes much the same points that have been made before, and stay the course.



Chris Young

42DJ

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 1:09:44 AM UTC-7, wrote:
The primary difference between regionals and nationals is the role nationals play in seeding and team selection so losing that as a goal means there's really no longer much difference and setting one's sights at experimentation at the national level loses much of it's meaning.


Just have to reply to this, given my earlier comments about choosing _what_ we measure.

With no disrespect or personal animus intended, the quote above means that from his personal perspective, the goal of US Nationals is Team Selection for Worlds.

I think other people may not prioritize that as highly, and would be happy with a National Championships that simply exists to prove who is the "best" pilot in the whole country. Again, how you measure that and which skills you deem most-important are up for debate.

Chris - I think the reason you don't see bold experimentation at Nationals is because right now the responsibility for the event lies completely in the hands of organizers. As volunteers, this means there is a LOT of pressure to "not screw up". Its not the same as a startup that can afford to lose money or have failed experiments until the formula for success can be found - one "bad" event can ruin a site's reputation, result in thousands of dollars of debt, or sour people on a particular set of organizers (Logan 2011 still echoes in some people's minds, for example). AFAIK, the SSA doesn't really "back" the Nationals with any sort of financial muscle or organizational force - so there's no one to turn to if an experiment doesn't work out well. With no 'safety net', its easy to see why organizers would be risk-averse and prefer a marginally-successful event over a bold experiment. Lastly, being a cautious bunch, I think pilots are hesitant to sign up months in advance for an unknown format that requires them to plunk down hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars. It takes a real promoter (see: Vassel, Bruno) to get people motivated and committed to such things; and there just aren't a whole lot of those in our soaring community.

--Noel

Noel,

Great post and great thinking BUT as far as I can see.......

There has never been an Regional, National or International soaring competition (in the past 10-20 years at least) that chooses a champion based on outright distance and "maximization of the soaring day." Im not saying that this is right or wrong, but other than OLC (which is relatively new, has almost no rules at all and is very, very vague at best) all sailplane competition is based on some sort of a set track with a start time. I think those are basic minimums to having a "race." Basing the best pilot on outright maximization of the day is a challenge and while it does sound fun, but it is a dramatic change from the traditions of modern sailplane contests, racing, regional, national, world championships and of course the latest rage, Sailplane Grand Prix.

I am all for out of the box thinking, but I think this is a very different thing entirely. As it stands I don't see OLC being a real form of competition. It needs some basic rules to become so. I also think we need to get some experience under our belts with some events, understand the satisfaction level of the competitors, etc before we begin naming US National Champions from based OLC events.

Can you think of any other sport (sailing, adventure racing, etc) that measures itself based on saying go (sorta?) and seeing who goes farther in a given day with defined no start, no defined course and no real rules. Fascinating, but I'm still highly skeptical. ;-)

Can we compromise and at least come up with the concept of a start gate for OLC racing? Please :-). Something tangible?

Sean

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 11:05:04 AM UTC-4, noel.wade wrote:
On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 1:09:44 AM UTC-7, wrote:

The primary difference between regionals and nationals is the role nationals play in seeding and team selection so losing that as a goal means there's really no longer much difference and setting one's sights at experimentation at the national level loses much of it's meaning.





Just have to reply to this, given my earlier comments about choosing _what_ we measure.



With no disrespect or personal animus intended, the quote above means that from his personal perspective, the goal of US Nationals is Team Selection for Worlds.



I think other people may not prioritize that as highly, and would be happy with a National Championships that simply exists to prove who is the "best" pilot in the whole country. Again, how you measure that and which skills you deem most-important are up for debate.



Chris - I think the reason you don't see bold experimentation at Nationals is because right now the responsibility for the event lies completely in the hands of organizers. As volunteers, this means there is a LOT of pressure to "not screw up". Its not the same as a startup that can afford to lose money or have failed experiments until the formula for success can be found - one "bad" event can ruin a site's reputation, result in thousands of dollars of debt, or sour people on a particular set of organizers (Logan 2011 still echoes in some people's minds, for example). AFAIK, the SSA doesn't really "back" the Nationals with any sort of financial muscle or organizational force - so there's no one to turn to if an experiment doesn't work out well. With no 'safety net', its easy to see why organizers would be risk-averse and prefer a marginally-successful event over a bold experiment. Lastly, being a cautious bunch, I think pilots are hesitant to sign up months in advance for an unknown format that requires them to plunk down hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars. It takes a real promoter (see: Vassel, Bruno) to get people motivated and committed to such things; and there just aren't a whole lot of those in our soaring community.



--Noel

I mostly agree with Chris Young. It seems to me that most of the solutions do not address the elephant in the room, which is there is no replacement population in the sport of soaring. Moving the nationals closer, making some classes handicapped, gently adjusting tasking one way or the other could generate some minimal effects, but it does not stop the fact that if this continues, soaring as a competitive sport will no longer exist once most of the people on this thread will no longer be able to fly.

As far as I have observed in my own progression in soaring, those around me and the juniors that I have been in close contact with, it seems to me that there are two major issues that beset the soaring scene in the USA today.

1) Most of the population is simply unaware of what soaring is. We need to get the message of soaring across through various means in order to attract new membership, plain and simple. This will not be focused on this thread....

2) Once a potential pilot does get hooked enough to get their license, their ability to progress in the sport, unless they are financially well equipped is very difficult. After getting rated, most pilots will fly in a club. Many clubs, especially when it comes to juniors are not very inclined to allow their equipment to be used over prolonged flights, such as the five hour, let alone cross country. The social scene is not very conducive either. A sizeable enough of a contingent of the older folk thinks it is unreasonable and unfair that the juniors "have it easy" or are doing things differently than they had. In general, it is not easy for new people to enter into this sort of cliquish environment with a lot of existing politics. Furthermore, for juniors, when the next youngest person is 45 years old, the interactions are already highly demanding and it doesn't help when you have people hostile to their presence in the first place.

Aside from the club environment, simply bridging the gap between private pilot and cross country is a very difficult one, even if all the prerequisites line up. We fly in a very mentally demanding sport that is very hard. This period in a pilot's soaring career is one that is least rewarding and most demanding. It is necessary to significantly assist and motivate new pilots going through this period.

Once a pilot starts flying cross country, they might start getting interested in the prospect of flying contests. However, on the outset, they see a bloated set of rules, complicated tasks, and a huge amount of commitment in time and money to participate in this. Frankly, the vast majority prefer OLC because of this. Nephi is an excellent example! They were fully booked for the Nephi OLC event, but the regional to be done in August, which has a relatively very large number of pilots signed up, is significantly less than the OLC event! Contests are becoming too difficult and too burdensome to justify the event for many people.

One possible solution and one that would minimize an obstacle to racing is to greatly simplify the format. I think it would be beneficial to get rid of the TAT and the MAT, and have two racing formats: Assigned Task and an OLC style distance task, with some additions to make it work for a grid and a become more of a race. There are several reasons

1) If you get rid of the MAT/TAT, you greatly simplify the rules and the concept of racing. If you have a pure distance task, it is simple: You go as far as you can within the OLC format and come home. This is something that pilots can easily learn at their home field and something that easily registers for even a layman.

2) We keep the AST for pure racing tasks as they are also very simple and easy to practice. I would advise that the task would potentially target a shorter time for the winner, such as two hours on what would be a three hour TAT task, with a reasonable opportunity for the rest of the finishers to file in between 2-3:30 hours.

3) This seems to me to be a better compromise for the different kinds of flying that most of do already, rather than the TAT/MAT. We have distance pilots and racing pilots.

The contest admin and the pilots flying in such a meet have a lot of discretion over how they would like to task such a contest. It could be entirely one kind of task or the other. They could save the ASTs for the stronger days for better "pure" racing or they could instead use the OLC tasks on those days so that pilots can really stretch out far.

For some specific ways that the race would be executed:

1) I would keep the starts/finishes with a five mile and a 1 mile sector with a minimum finish altitude.

2) The OLC tasks would also have a start and a finish, with a LST style start, with a standard 30 minute start window. This way everyone has a fair chance to start and embark on their distance journey.

3) Unless someone has a better idea, we would keep the 1000 point system. For OLC tasks, it would be good to have a major bonus for coming back to the finish. I would have a say scoring formula that basically takes the winner's handicapped distance plus 250 points as the basis for the rest of the scoring.

4) I would eliminate devaluations. Every day is a 1000 point day. The 1-26ers use a very nice scoring formula: the speed of the slowest finisher determines the distance points for the day. This is to reward he who comes back, no matter how slow. I think this would work well with the proposed format and would simplify understanding the scoring significantly.

5) I would eliminate any leeway in the scoring formula. While it seems nice that busting the minimum finish by 50 ft still garners a score, all of those policies are very complicated to understand for any entering the racing scene. At this point, loggers display altitudes. Even the ancient Colibri does this. No one says that you have to turn a turnpoint at exactly one mile or come in exactly at minimum finish, or exit the start sector at exactly 2 minutes or the like. Pilots should build in their own margins, rather than the scoring formula.

6) The only potential problem I could see in the execution of an OLC style distance day is that it would inherently reward flying very large durations.. I think that this is actually okay, but if it is considered a problem, that could be fixed by having a maximum time. The way this would work is you go as far as you can in a given time span, and then your distance ends there and you get your 250 point bonus if you get back to the airport. I don't like adding a maximum time for it complicates the scoring process and the task, though it is a solution if this is considered a problem.

7) This format works for both limited handicapped racing and pure classes. The format as is now is not conducive for low performance anyway with so much weight being put on speed points, rendering them uncompetitive.

Some of my humble thoughts,
Daniel Sazhin

I need to go crunch some numbers but one thing is like to see is greater depth of the competitive field at nationals. One way to do this (a more radical pivot I know and maybe people don't want to think this differently) is to have the handicaps overlap so that the large numbers of gliders in the middle handicap ranges have more than one place to go. Allowing standard class gliders into both 15m and Club would significantly expand the depth of the field in both. I don't see much point in trying to include ultra low performance gliders in Club. They are better suited for Sean's idea of OLC where you could make tasking much more flexible.

The BIG problem this solves is giving pilots on either coast a real competitive contest for their glider without driving 3 days. Fewer classes ensures that you can sustain an east/west strategy. Handicapped classes and east/west pairing need to go together - without some handicap overlap you are likely to drive participation down rather than up.

I think the idea of making the OLC camp a fun and friendly entry into course racing is a very interesting, but at the risk of sounding too beholding to the preferences of pilots, I would suggest we figure out what changes would really represent an enhancement to the pilot enjoyment of what is a very popular and enjoyable format before inflicting a new vision on them. It is quite possible that Nephi OLC camp caters to people with very different competitive juices. I personally interviewed a number of pilots from last year's event and it was clear that for many head-to-head, multi-day cumulative scoring racing events were not appealing - at least not at the time.

Glad to have a junior voice chime in.

There is a proposal the RC is working to eliminate all the graduated penalties, devaluation formulas, motorglider accommodations, etc. many of those were added over the years to address real or perceived fairness issues. A clean slate is one thing worth considering - though personally I think rules complexity is a bit of a red herring. The real issue is cost and time.

How is a time-limited OLC race with a start gate different from a no-turn MAT? Maybe freeing people up from the need to go to turnpoints helps? I find the OLC leg valuation rules to be unnecessarily Byzantine. Why not make every leg equal value and have no limit on the number of legs? Daniel made mincemeat out of the field on a MAT day at Montague by turning it into a lap race using basically one thermal all day long - pretty cool.

On consequence of simplification is more instances of what happened at Moriarty this year where one bold pilot essentially won the contest on the first day by making distance on a day that no one else did. That was under the current rules that have all the complexities of number of competitors devaluation, etc. Are people okay with that?

One reason contests are dying is the contest is all about the pilot at the expense of everyone else. If my family has two weeks of vacation time to spend and it is spent at a contest I have no more time to spend with the family doing something they might enjoy. Contests suck and are extremely boring unless you are the pilot or an enthusiast.

How often do the majority of contest pilots bring the family? I'll bet most have done it once and the amount of crap the pilot receives from the rest of the family is huge and detracts from the fun of contest flying. If more contests had a social director to find stuff for the family's of pilots to do while the flying was going on more would be willing to attend. Dinners don't count; pilots sit around, ignore the family and tell stories about the day.

How many contests pilots have young families? Most pilots are FOGs with time and cash. I'm not sure of this but I'll guess many contest pilots aged 25-45 are divorced or single and thus responsible only for themselves.

Contest flying is incredibly selfish and does not mesh well families. Change all the rules, classes, run experiments, and anything else related to the flying and the growth of contests will remain as it is now. In decline. Run a few contests where a pilot can bring his family and they have a great time and contests will grow.

Sean - A quick clarification: Chris is advocating pure distance tasking/reward. I take the position that distance-type tasks may be a good way to introduce diversity into contest tasking and measure a broader set of skills. But I personally don't think pure distance or forcing pilots to "Go Big" is the way to determine the best soaring pilot in the country.

--Noel


On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 8:23:56 AM UTC-7, Sean Fidler wrote:
Noel,

Great post and great thinking BUT as far as I can see.......

There has never been an Regional, National or International soaring competition (in the past 10-20 years at least) that chooses a champion based on outright distance and "maximization of the soaring day."

Noel,

Agreed. Again I am all for finding fun ways to play together. I just need a little structure ;-).

These are great ideas and thoughts. Enjoying this thread!

Sean