Seniors Contest

The 5km finish cylinder procedure with 200m min agl which I am used to has
no traffic problems at all.

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Fred Mueller" a écrit dans le message de
news: ...
I'm kinda new at this, but here's my two cents worth. There is an
advantage to a finish line that we don't see with a cylinder finish.
Everyone is funneled through a fairly precise point so we know where to
look for traffic and we have a fairly good idea how their pattern to land
will look. In a cylinder finish, all bets are off and every type of
pattern entry known to man from every possible direction is accomplished
along with often unpredictable results, this is especially bad during a
MAT or when different classes are finishing from different directions.
There are ways to solve this but it makes things more complicated than a
simple finish line.

FM


remove nospam to reply

wrote:
I agree with Casey... but I'd rephrase it in a less politically correct
way:

There are some pilots who train for a racing environment and many who
don't. No surprise then that the latter are incompetent in some of the
basic skills of racing. Like taking off with water, centering thermals,
gaggle etiquette, and finishing. As finishes are highly regulated (a
requirement for safety), one way to short cut ignorance is to change
them into something we can all do. LCD. The inertia of ignorance and
lassitude will always overcome skill and enthusiasm (sadly, by shear
force of numbers).

There is nothing inherently dangerous in a line finish accomplished by
skillful pilots exercising good judgement. There IS unbounded risk in
any maneuver attempted by pilots who take the environment too lightly.
If you don't want to improve your skills, why compete? That's the point
of it, after all. To compare yourself to others... to enter into a
rivalry. When you meet someone better, you tip your hat to his or her
skills and accomplishments, then redouble your efforts to improve your
own. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, stop competing and
start attending soaring camps. They're fun too.

And, of course, there's the simplest solution of all. If you have to
race, but don't like finish lines, then finish high. You are allowed to
do that. If I thought that the finish line was inherently dangerous,
I'd be up there with you. God knows I do my level best to keep a good
distance between me and the prestart gaggle -- whenever I can. Now if
you want to improve safety, put some effort into that!

Kilo Charlie wrote:

Every single one of these is a stall spin accident. They are

examples of

poor judgement and are not different than any other stall spin
accident....e.g. from base to final. To suggest that this is not

related to

judgement but to the gate is a huge stretch. Some are not even

contest

flights and are therefore unrelated to finish gates at all.

An example of an accident that is related to the finish gate is if

there

were a midair at the gate.

So it brings back to attempting to legislate good judgement.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

I am a fairly new contest pilot, flying in sport's class in the
northeast.
If I had a competitive glider I might consider standard/15m class.

So take my comments as someone who has never had to do a gate finish
for real, but has considered them, practiced them and does consider
them inherently dangerous.

There is nothing inherently dangerous in a line finish accomplished
by
skillful pilots exercising good judgement.

I consider them to be inherently dangerous because the solution for
the fastest time pushes the pilot towards a very dangerous flying
situation.

Flying at best speed to fly for the last thermal all the way to 50agl
at the finish line. For my Grob102, if I was in a 4 knot thermal
that's 79 knots.
Also it's a 25/1 glide ration so at 1 nm away I am at 290 feet, 2nm at
540 feet. This seems pretty dangerous to me. If I hit sink, then I am
landing wherever the sink hit me, without any chance for picking a
field, flying a pattern, etc. Even if don't hit sink, I am still only
set up to land straight ahead past the finish line.

So most pilots add some safety margin (in the form of extra potential
energy), they take the thermal higher than they should (from a speed
perspective). As they get closer to the finish line, they convert the
potential energy to speed. Then re-convert the speed to height for a
'normal' pattern.

The problem is that you score higher (faster) for a lower safety
margin.

Why not just set the minimum required safety margin for all pilots ?
The required finish altitude is just that, a minimum safety margin for
all contest pilots. The rules are saying "if you reduce the safety
margin less than this, you will not get a better score than this."

And, of course, there's the simplest solution of all. If you have to
race, but don't like finish lines, then finish high. You are allowed
to
do that.

But the rules should not provide a scoring benefit to the pilots who
decide to reduce the safety margin. I don't want to be thinking "hey,
if I really push this final glide I might make up that 20point
advantage my competitor got yesterday."

Todd Smith
3S

Kilo Charlie wrote:
Every single one of these is a stall spin accident. They are
examples of
poor judgement and are not different than any other stall spin
accident....e.g. from base to final....

That's right, but you're missing the point. Of course all these
accidents represent failures of judgement, decision-making, "improper
manipulation of the controls" or whatever you want to call it.

The fact is, though, that the standard finish gate procedure seems to
require a lot of that judgement, especially at the end of a long hot
flight and a long marginal final glide. This is proved by the fact that
a disquieting number of pilots are finding this task occasionally
beyond them and crashing.

So what do we do? We can say "well, they were bozos who didn't show
good judgment" and forget about it, which I take to be your proposal.
Ok, but then we resign ourselves to the fact that we will be picking
gliders out of the trees about once every two years, and mourning the
loss of one or two pilots per decade. That doesn't seem to bother you.
It bothers me, and it would bother me even if I were foolish enough to
think I was immune to screwing up once in a thousand or so finishes.

The fact is that a cylinder finish, followed by normal pattern entry,
is a maneuver that requires far less "judgement" by pilots. It's not
screw-up proof -- it is possible to fail in judgment here too, for
example by trying to thermal at low altitude with waterballast in an
effort to save a 5 minute rolling finish penalty, and spining out of
the thermal. But I think most of us find that a much less likely
failure of judgment.

Yes, it's less "fun" and has less "spectator appeal." For both, let me
suggest instead a tow after the contest flight and go do some
aerobatics. Put on a really good show. It will be even more fun and it
will really please the spectators.

And on spectator appeal, consider the effect that seeing even one crash
has on spectators and spouses. Just one crash converts the spectator
from "wow that looks like fun, I think I'll try it" to "man, that must
be dangerous".

John Cochrane
BB

Greg Arnold wrote:

I did a high-speed low pass pullup 180 once. Just once.
I was low energy on the last 30 degrees of turn back and didn't
like it. Fortunately there was nobody around to see my cross-runway
landing. I don't think I'll do it again.


Sounds like your "high-speed" wasn't that fast. If you didn't have
enough altitude to make a normal landing, something was wrong with your
technique.

LOL. Yep, I thought I said that already

But there are "other" factors. Bumpy air means you can either overstress
by flying above Va, or dive only to Va and be lower energy. At Va,
a pullup in a ballasted 40:1 glider is different than that same pullup
in a PW-2. Come on out, Greg, and try your perfect "technique" in a
draggy PW-2 and I'll videotape it.

This is similar to my Baby Ace. Even at Vne dive with proper technique,
it is so draggy and underpowered that it is very hard to finish a loop
without stalling inverted. Quite different than a Lancair...

Then again, I'm a "tilter" hehehe...

--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

BB wrote:
Kilo Charlie wrote:

The fact is that a cylinder finish, followed by normal pattern entry,
is a maneuver that requires far less "judgement" by pilots.

When you talk about a cylinder finish, are you talking about
a cylinder around the airport, and then having pilots come into the
pattern at random directions, or a cylinder or remote point
away from the airport, that brings gliders into the pattern
in an "onramp" style?

John Cochrane

I'm trying to think about this from the Sports Class perspective too.
If I understand it, in Sports Class one chooses their own TPs,
so the pilots can come in from any direction, and a cylinder around the
airport wouldn't seem to solve much in terms of head-on
surprises.

So a remote point or remote cylinder seems like a better answer.
Has this been done in US contests? I am ignorant of what the term
"cylinder finish" means. Is it a remote cylinder or one around the
airport?

I liked the non-US post about remote finish points and how they are
used, just wondered if this had been tried on the US also...

--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

Jamie,

That is exactly what I was thinking. A control point.
Yes, sort of like what we locally call an IP (initial point)
when entering on the 45 for our normal pattern to land.

We are fortunate to have a huge metal tank maybe 50 meters
diameter that could be used as this remote "control point" and
is in line with the 45 entry (sort of). It is probably 3-4 km
away. At 500ft AGL in a 2-33 with a headwind this would be a little
close, but in the L-13 or anything sexier it looks ok.

Thanks for your post! Control point. I like that.
Is it scored as an OZ or a cylinder? Scoring as an OZ
would take a little bit of thought, and as a cylinder, I'd
expect it'd need to be pretty narrow to not cover the airport.

In article ,
John Doe wrote:
Mark,

I think what you are getting at is what we in the UK
call a control point, a final turnpoint that must be
rounded in the normal way, but is only maybe 5-10 km
from the airfield, each glider is a few hundred feet
(or more depending on the pilots saftey margins) up
at this point and after turning the control point,
competitors turn to the airfield and dive to a known
linear finish gate. There is generally no minimun
finish height so often the gate is crossed under 50
ft but as all competitors are coming in from a fixed
direction towards a small and clear area of land it
eliminates the vast majority of head to head at low
altitude issues and I've never seen congestion at a
control point myself (altough as my own competition
experience is rather limited I won't say it never happens).

As for non comp gliders, everywhere I've been competing
the daily briefing for non-comp pilots always stressed
the comps procedures as well as use of the radio to
ensure separation in launch, landing and finishing.
As long as the finish gate is suitably chosen to be
away from the main landing area and obstacles with
space to land after as well as an easy entry into circuit
for those with the speed to do so it can be both a
safe and an exciting way to finish without the artificial
complications of raised finish lines.

John,

Whilst some of those accidents are attributable
to finish gates, I'd certainly question your thinking
the last three.
Taking the Discus crash for example, in a Discus
(in which I have a reasonable if not spectacular amount
of time), 500' is adequate, if not totally comfortable,
for a decent enough circuit, that crash, as well as
the others, from the reports seem to be the whole 'slightly
low in the circuit leads to a poor turn leading to
a spin in' issue.
Where the blame in that lies is the topic for another
thread but that, like the other last three, does not
seem to be attributable directly to finish gate issues
as surely a pilot just making it over a 500' 1 mile
finish gate would be in exactly the same situation
as someone who has just got a few hundred feet of height
from a competition pullup?

The others seem to be 'insufficient speed, insufficient
time to recover from the spin', afaiks the same situation
as trying to scrabble over a start gate at 450' and
screwing up.

It's been said before but unfortunately you can't legislate
good judgement.

Cheers

Jamie Denton

--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd

Mark James Boyd wrote:
I'm trying to think about this from the Sports Class perspective too.
If I understand it, in Sports Class one chooses their own TPs,
so the pilots can come in from any direction, and a cylinder around the
airport wouldn't seem to solve much in terms of head-on
surprises.

The finish cylinder is basically a circle with (minimally) a 2 mile
*diameter*. A typical one will have a floor of 500 feet and no top.
Once the edge of the cylinder is crossed, one pulls up from the final
glide speed, which may well in excess of 100 knots, to a more reasonable
55 or 60 knots for pattern and landing. Following the pull up you are
usually at a minimum of 600 to 700 feet, and there is plenty of time to
sort out traffic, and sequence for landing. People finishing from the
same direction are no more of a problem than they are with a finish
gate. People finishing from the opposite direction are also not a big
deal, as both you and the head-on glider have normally slowed to 60
knots or less by the time you are within a mile of each other. Most
people by that point have started a series of gradual clearing turns, so
they can assess the traffic situation.

By contrast, with a finish gate, you have gliders converging on the same
point in space (thanks to GPS) at final glide speed of 100+ knots (if
you're under 100 feet, you better be going at least that fast), pulling
up to 200 feet or so (unless they have too little energy), then having
to sort themselves within a few moments and land. Now throw an MAT
(modified assigned task) into the mix, and things get interesting, as
you get some gliders running straight into the gate, and others
approaching the gate from one side or the other (and every once in a
while some bozo goes through the gate in the wrong direction), then
having to make a last minute high speed turn to go through the gate in
the proper direction. Now yes, things are easier with a required final
turnpoint (control point), several miles away from the finish gate, to
get everyone finishing in the same direction, but not all (or even most,
in my experience) contest directors bother to use them.

Marc

Fred Mueller wrote:

I'm kinda new at this,

New enough that you haven't used a finish line with the ground at the
bottom? If you haven't, it might be harder to understand how it works
out in practice.

but here's my two cents worth. There is an
advantage to a finish line that we don't see with a cylinder finish.
Everyone is funneled through a fairly precise point so we know where to
look for traffic and we have a fairly good idea how their pattern to
land will look. In a cylinder finish, all bets are off and every type
of pattern entry known to man from every possible direction is
accomplished along with often unpredictable results,

I don't see this happening in the contests I've flown with large, high
cylinder finishes. All the pilots that had a good finish have been able
to use the standard pattern to land. Pilots that did not have a good
finish often used non-standard patterns, such as rolling finishes or no
downwind leg, and so on.

this is especially
bad during a MAT or when different classes are finishing from different
directions.

My experience is the low finish line is worse in these conditions,
because the pilots are NOT being "funneled" (brought along a small angle
sector) to a precise point: they arriving_ spread out more or less along
the line from many different directins, including 180 degrees apart,
with some hooking the gate and doing a very non-standard pattern entry.
I've even seen 180s after a finish, with the glider landing back into
the oncoming finishers.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Ok, but then we resign ourselves to the fact that we will be picking
gliders out of the trees about once every two years, and mourning the
loss of one or two pilots per decade. That doesn't seem to bother you.

OK I see you're resorting to personal insults now John. That's what happens
sometimes when a persons arguement fails on it's own merits.

Truth be known I'm a conservative racing pilot that takes few chances.
You've flown with me in Uvalde and as I remember you took more chances than
I did. You are absolutely wrong re the finish gate and have no data to
prove me otherwise. I have not ever felt the finish gate to be a threat.
It sometimes begins to sound like you all want protection from yourselves
i.e. you MUST fly dangerously if not prevented from doing so by the rules.

I'm all for educating and training pilots to be aware of the threats they
might encounter at ALL levels not just the finish gate. I am NOT for a
subgroup of people wishing to basically install rubber baby buggy bumpers
into all of the racing rules. It's a dead horse beating.

Casey

"Kilo Charlie" wrote in message
news:nyqYd.42760$FM3.22504@fed1read02...
Ok, but then we resign ourselves to the fact that we will be picking
gliders out of the trees about once every two years, and mourning the
loss of one or two pilots per decade. That doesn't seem to bother you.

OK I see you're resorting to personal insults now John. That's what
happens
sometimes when a persons arguement fails on it's own merits.

Truth be known I'm a conservative racing pilot that takes few chances.
You've flown with me in Uvalde and as I remember you took more chances
than
I did. You are absolutely wrong re the finish gate and have no data to
prove me otherwise. I have not ever felt the finish gate to be a threat.
It sometimes begins to sound like you all want protection from yourselves
i.e. you MUST fly dangerously if not prevented from doing so by the rules.

I'm all for educating and training pilots to be aware of the threats they
might encounter at ALL levels not just the finish gate. I am NOT for a
subgroup of people wishing to basically install rubber baby buggy bumpers
into all of the racing rules. It's a dead horse beating.

Casey



I agree with Casey. Contests are getting bor-ring.

I feel like a rant.

Go read Sterling Starr's reminiscing about the 1966 US Nationals at Reno,
Nevada in the latest Soaring Magazine. I was there too. Those guys knew
what soaring competition was all about.

These days, you guys don't want to risk a land out or fly long tasks and you
don't want low finishes.

You sound like a bunch of wusses.

Why not stop calling what you do a contest and call it what it has become -
just a rally. If the soaring rules committee ran the Indy 500, the drivers
would be wearing pink bunny suits and driving pedal cars.

Get real. If you want to race, then RACE. Sure, there'll be some risks.
If the kitchen's too hot for you, get out.

This ELT rule is the last straw. Maybe if I could borrow a PLB to put in my
parachute it would be OK but build it into the glider? No way. ELT's have
been used in GenAv for decades and 99% of all activation's have been hard
landings with no damage.

How much hassle is it going to be when a pothole activates the damn thing in
the trailer? I can see it now, a glider trailer humming down the interstate
with a swarm of CAP planes overhead trying to triangulate on the thing.

Sheesh! What's become of us?

End rant.

Bill Daniels