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#21
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
noel.wade wrote:
After all, the G-102 and Junior have much better penetration and handicapping alone can't account for the differences in their polars under various conditions! How about a dynamic handicap? Using the logger files, you could evaluate not only the wind profile, but also the strenght and diameter of thermals and their separation, cloud base, etc. etc. and apply not a handicap number, but rather a handycap matrix which is fair for all gliders in all conditions. And don't forget to define a pilot factor as well, otherwise the experienced ones would have an unfair advantage! You know that you have your parameters and the formula correct when, after normalizing the results, everybody gets 1000 points. |
#22
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
At 19:47 23 September 2008, noel.wade wrote:
Look at an individual sport like Bowling or Golf: Do you really think that the handicap there makes everyone play at the same level? What about the guy who can afford better clubs or a custom-drilled bowling- ball? Does the handicap take that into account? No! Actually, I think it *does* for bowling and golf. The handicap in both cases is based on the prior performance record of the individual competitor; if he's working with better equipment, that will show up as better performance. Hard for me to see how the same approach could work in racing gliders, but then again I know almost nothing about competition - my very limited racing has been confined mostly to 1-26s. I *was* part of a bowling team at work for a couple of years, though. Mostly we just went bowling to drink beer and tell jokes. I've seen a lot of that going on at glider contests, too. Jim Beckman |
#23
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
Just to throw my 2 cents into this debate...
I come at this as a former US Club Class Team member who owns a club class glider and loves the club class concept BUT one that has put himself on the "Black List" of pilots banned from competing in Club Class due to flying another WGC in a non-club, world, junior class. I would definitely fly a Club Class event here in the US rather than a Sports Class event at any level - it is fairer! Even more so at a Club Class Nationals if I could get back on the team ;-( Getting a US Club Class Nationals (integrated with US Sports Nats which I support as a 1st step to possible independence of the class) will allow people who fly club class ships the opportunity for fairer racing amongst a smaller range of handicapped ships AND allow for flying Assigned Tasks (AT's) like the rest of the classes here in the US get to fly. Flying AT's is fun and really lets you measure your skills on a fixed course on any particular day against the best pilots who fly. I know that there are those who would ban all AT-type tasks in the interest of safety, but they are fun AND the Club Class around the world lets older gliders fly AT's whereas our Sports Class makes this fairly impossible or extremely unfair to the "lower" performance ships. Getting to the Team topoic, one thing I beleive our club class team members are missing from their experience when they go to Club Class Worlds is that, coming out of the US Sports Class, many of them HAVE NEVER FLOWN an Assigned Task in a club class ship in their qualifiying for the team. And if they are a Sports Class only competitior having flown contests only in Sports Class, they will NEVER have flown an AT until they get sent on a 500km AT in the mountains of France with thunderstorms likely (as was done in France 2006). Getting competitive pilots on the US Club Class Team requires having practice and experience at Club Class racing prior to getting overseas. The only way this works is to enable Club Class pilots to be better developed here at home. How we do this is to provide for Club Class contests here at home. Whether or not they are integrated with other classes at the national level or as a stand alone nationals is irrelevant. The need for the class both to better develop our team members AND to provide for better and fairer racing for all who wish to should be the end goal here. One additional thing that never gets said in this debate is that the Ruels Committeee has no way of knowing what non-competition pilots would be spurred into club class flying if the Club Class was added tot he list of competing classes. If they send the SRA poll to existent contest pilots only and you ask to add another class... well then off course you are going to perceiving a further fracturing of the currently existing base of contest pilots. The question that needs to be asked and has never been fairly addressed by the SRA poll is the following: If you are a glider pilot having access to or flying a club class-type glider and do not currently compete: Would the addition of Club Class events at the regional and national level encourage you to get racing? Get me a meaningful answer to that question and we may see that adding Club Class may, in fact, expand the base of contest pilots and then everyone wins. We just dont know and fears of "further dividing up" the existing contest pilot population are unfounded until we get that answer. Tim McAllister EY |
#24
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
Also, If we really wanted a "Club Class" in the USA that was representative of most Club fleets, we'd see an AWFUL lot of G-102s, Schweizer metal birds, and Blaniks or Twin Astirs... *Maybe a Junior, for the "high dollar" folks! *Anyone with a glider produced after the mid 1970's would be disqualified! * *sigh* --Noel Does anyone remember that the region 9 (which had standard, sports, 15m and 18m classes) in Parowan, the Sports Class winner was a Grob Twin Astir? That ship needed so much work done and was so old, that it was a "family joke" among the region 9 pilots. However, that was the same pilot (Nick Kennedy) that was standing on the winning podium every single day of the 7 day contest. I have to tell you too, that the Sparrowhawk also won a day or two. Of course, I did have to make a joke, and give the pilot of the Sprarrowhawk (Bill Thar) a D-cell battery as a prize. Mike the Strike was right, the tasking was different, however, I also had another pilot at the 2008 parowan contest that had NEVER flown in a contest before mentioning (after his gut wrenching screams, of I DID IT...I DID IT) that he learned more in one week of a contest, than a year of flying at the club. He flew an older ship (Ventus, but most of his flying was in a Zuni II). If a contest is aware of the ships that have entered, it can be fun, exciting, and a learning experience, no matter what type of ship you are flying. Also, a lot of people forget that contests are not just for winning trophies...they are training, learning, and challenging yourself. Just my 2cents. micki |
#25
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
On Sep 24, 1:00*am, John Smith wrote:
noel.wade wrote: After all, the G-102 and Junior have much better penetration and handicapping alone can't account for the differences in their polars under various conditions! How about a dynamic handicap? Using the logger files, you could evaluate not only the wind profile, but also the strenght and diameter of thermals and their separation, cloud base, etc. etc. and apply not a handicap number, but rather a handycap matrix which is fair for all gliders in all conditions. And don't forget to define a pilot factor as well, otherwise the experienced ones would have an unfair advantage! You know that you have your parameters and the formula correct when, after normalizing the results, everybody gets 1000 points. Interesting. I thought about this idea a bit a couple of years back. I think it would be possible to come up with something analytically on the basis of pilot seeding, average climb strength, average altitude, wind and maybe some task-specific attributes. You do have to be able to separate out pilot skill from sailplane performance when you do it and I suspect there is some autocorrelation between the two. Something simpler might be increasing the spread in handicaps as task distance increases, since task distance is a decent indicator for a lot of the other factors you'd want to consider (except wind). The problem, and the reason I dismissed the idea, is that it is cumbersome, would potentially lead to a lot of arguing about how each day gets measured and further obfuscates the scoring process -- not to mention the burden on the scorer. The other problem is that one of the issues for very low performance ships in particular is the risk of outlanding - which goes up as the tasks get more challenging. Because you are adjusting handicaps on the basis of long-term averages, you would likely see lots of points lavished on the pilots in low-performing ships just for getting around the course on challenging days. As a consequence you could end up with a handicap system that pushes pilots in low-performing ships to the top of the scoresheet in the, say, 2 out of 5 contests where they can get around the course every day, but finds them at the bottom of the scoresheet in the contests where they have a landout. On average they are in the middle, but they end up winning a disproportionate share of contests. BB wrote a very interesting article on this in terms of overall contest strategy irrespective of handicaps. The current handicap system has a bit of this built in already - increasing the spreads might make it worse rather than better. The conclusion I came to is that the current system works well enough for most Std and 15M ship of late-70s vintage on up. The Sports Class is and should be optimized around a typical mid-80s 15M and Std gliders (basically, Club Class, that is). If you want to fly something outside these parameters you need to accept the fact that the scoring system can't totally level the playing field for you, but in the end you probably aren't expecting to be on the podium - and that's okay. At least you still get to fly with everybody else and learn about racing. I have a slightly different view on 2-seaters, but that's a topic for a whole different thread. The idea of restricting team selection to people flying Club Class gliders only I think is a red herring because the scoring system and contest rules are optimized around these gliders already so the odds that someone flying an ASK-14 is going to get on the US team is impossibly low (if they did they'd have earned it). The arguments about low performing gliders dragging the tasking down should be resolved through better training of CDs on how to call tasks and in particular by realizing that you can't optimize task calling for the lowest common denominator - that's not the main purpose of Sports Class. If someone wants to fly a 2-33 in a Regionals they better have a big crew and a trailer ready to go. 9B |
#26
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
On Sep 24, 11:49*am, Tim wrote:
Just to throw my 2 cents into this debate... I come at this as a former US Club Class Team member who owns a club class glider and loves the club class concept BUT one that has put himself on the "Black List" of pilots banned from competing in Club Class due to flying another WGC in a non-club, world, junior class. I would definitely fly a Club Class event here in the US rather than a Sports Class event at any level - it is fairer! Even more so at a Club Class Nationals if I could get back on the team ;-( Getting a US Club Class Nationals (integrated with US Sports Nats which I support as a 1st step to possible independence of the class) will allow people who fly club class ships the opportunity for fairer racing amongst a smaller range of handicapped ships AND allow for flying Assigned Tasks (AT's) like the rest of the classes here in the US get to fly. Flying AT's is fun and really lets you measure your skills on a fixed course on any particular day against the best pilots who fly. I know that there are those who would ban all AT-type tasks in the interest of safety, but they are fun AND the Club Class around the world lets older gliders fly AT's whereas our Sports Class makes this fairly impossible or extremely unfair to the "lower" performance ships. Getting to the Team topoic, one thing I beleive our club class team members are missing from their experience when they go to Club Class Worlds is that, coming out of the US Sports Class, many of them HAVE NEVER FLOWN an Assigned Task in a club class ship in their qualifiying for the team. And if they are a Sports Class only competitior having flown contests only in Sports Class, they will NEVER have flown an AT until they get sent on a 500km AT in the mountains of France with thunderstorms likely (as was done in France 2006). Getting competitive pilots on the US Club Class Team requires having practice and experience at Club Class racing prior to getting overseas. The only way this works is to enable Club Class pilots to be better developed here at home. How we do this is to provide for Club Class contests here at home. Whether or not they are integrated with other classes at the national level or as a stand alone nationals is irrelevant. *The need for the class both to better develop our team members AND to provide for better and fairer racing for all who wish to should be the end goal here. One additional thing that never gets said in this debate is that the Ruels Committeee has no way of knowing what non-competition pilots would be spurred into club class flying if the Club Class was added tot he list of competing classes. If they send the SRA poll to existent contest pilots only and you ask to add another class... well then off course you are going to perceiving a further fracturing of the currently existing base of contest pilots. The question that needs to be asked and has never been fairly addressed by the SRA poll is the following: If you are a glider pilot having access to or flying a club class-type glider and do not currently compete: Would the addition of Club Class events at the regional and national level encourage you to get racing? Get me a meaningful answer to that question and we may see that adding Club Class may, in fact, expand the base of contest pilots and then everyone wins. We just dont know and fears of "further dividing up" the existing contest pilot population are unfounded until we get that answer. Tim McAllister EY Tim makes some excellent points. It should be noted, however, that the same discrimination against previous US team members(other than Club) being on the Club team, helped open the door for Tim, and some others, to get to go to the "Big Show". This policy may not put the best pilots in the US on the team, but it does provide a way to develop new talent. Sadly, mot enough pilots seem to be aware, or interested, in this opportunity. AST experience. I don't know of any Club team member who has not had AST experience. It is true that a pilot coming up only in Sports could end up in this situation in the future. I know Tim had it because I watched him fly his Libelle against current technology ships and get his a** handed to him. He smiled all the way, had fun, and learned a lot. Tim's point about about the question of who isn't coming now and would if we had an active Club class is a good one which was on the poll draft list at one time and not used. Clearly this is a key point. The single largest driving force for creating another class is if it will increase participation enough to justify the offsetting negatives. If you are a pilot who would fall into this catagory, we would like to hear from you, so please ring in at on this. I'll report back later on what I hear. Thanks for ringing in Tim. UH |
#27
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
On Sep 24, 8:49*am, Tim wrote:
Just to throw my 2 cents into this debate... I come at this as a former US Club Class Team member who owns a club class glider and loves the club class concept BUT one that has put himself on the "Black List" of pilots banned from competing in Club Class due to flying another WGC in a non-club, world, junior class. I would definitely fly a Club Class event here in the US rather than a Sports Class event at any level - it is fairer! Even more so at a Club Class Nationals if I could get back on the team ;-( Getting a US Club Class Nationals (integrated with US Sports Nats which I support as a 1st step to possible independence of the class) will allow people who fly club class ships the opportunity for fairer racing amongst a smaller range of handicapped ships AND allow for flying Assigned Tasks (AT's) like the rest of the classes here in the US get to fly. Flying AT's is fun and really lets you measure your skills on a fixed course on any particular day against the best pilots who fly. I know that there are those who would ban all AT-type tasks in the interest of safety, but they are fun AND the Club Class around the world lets older gliders fly AT's whereas our Sports Class makes this fairly impossible or extremely unfair to the "lower" performance ships. Getting to the Team topoic, one thing I beleive our club class team members are missing from their experience when they go to Club Class Worlds is that, coming out of the US Sports Class, many of them HAVE NEVER FLOWN an Assigned Task in a club class ship in their qualifiying for the team. And if they are a Sports Class only competitior having flown contests only in Sports Class, they will NEVER have flown an AT until they get sent on a 500km AT in the mountains of France with thunderstorms likely (as was done in France 2006). Getting competitive pilots on the US Club Class Team requires having practice and experience at Club Class racing prior to getting overseas. The only way this works is to enable Club Class pilots to be better developed here at home. How we do this is to provide for Club Class contests here at home. Whether or not they are integrated with other classes at the national level or as a stand alone nationals is irrelevant. *The need for the class both to better develop our team members AND to provide for better and fairer racing for all who wish to should be the end goal here. One additional thing that never gets said in this debate is that the Ruels Committeee has no way of knowing what non-competition pilots would be spurred into club class flying if the Club Class was added tot he list of competing classes. If they send the SRA poll to existent contest pilots only and you ask to add another class... well then off course you are going to perceiving a further fracturing of the currently existing base of contest pilots. The question that needs to be asked and has never been fairly addressed by the SRA poll is the following: If you are a glider pilot having access to or flying a club class-type glider and do not currently compete: Would the addition of Club Class events at the regional and national level encourage you to get racing? Get me a meaningful answer to that question and we may see that adding Club Class may, in fact, expand the base of contest pilots and then everyone wins. We just dont know and fears of "further dividing up" the existing contest pilot population are unfounded until we get that answer. Tim McAllister EY You've been on the team so your view automatically gets my attention Tim. One way to test most of your ideas would be to at least do a separate scoring for Club Class ships within the next Sports Nationals - it wouldn't take any rules changes to do it and you could even give out a Joe Giltner-type award for the Club Class "winner". It wouldn't give the AST experience you're looking for, but call a few MATs with more than a couple of assigned turnpoints and you'll get most of the effect. I find the AST the easiest to fly - dodging weather not withstanding - but I grew up in racing with only ASTs so I'm used to it. Back then just navigating the course was often my biggest challenge. :-) I still think at the regional level you are going to divide up the classes too much and that overall Sports Class is a better solution to the challenges facing soaring competition in the US, as well as for picking US team members. 9B |
#28
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
snip
Noel, I seem to not be explaining myself well about the handicap system that I want. * I want a simple 1 number system like we currently use. *But that only works well when the handicap range is small. *That's why I snip Todd 3S Todd that is effectively what we have with the sports class and is probably the way it should be in my opinion. The high performing ships that really outclass the majority tend to have very low handicap numbers that tend to make them difficult to be competitive in most sport class competitions. The really low performance ships are hard to be competitive in simply because it can be difficult to consisitantly complete the tasks. So usually the only reason low performance and really high performance ships compete in sport class is becuase there isn't a better place for them to compete. The real racing occures in the middle somewhere. Just my opinion. Brian CFIIG/ASEL HP16T N16VP. |
#29
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Club Class vs. Sports Class
On Sep 24, 3:22*pm, wrote:
I still think at the regional level you are going to divide up the classes too much and that overall Sports Class is a better solution to the challenges facing soaring competition in the US, as well as for picking US team members. As a newcomer (who thinks international competiton is cool but realizes that it is highly unlikely that I'll do it), I couldn't agree more with 9B's comments. The US Team comprises such a small percentage of the glider-pilots in the USA. Its a point of pride to have top finishers at the International competiton; but I don't want to see my Regionals suffer just so a a couple of different names get to go overseas once every year or two. And the issue of participation goes beyond the "number of entrants per class" issue. It also speaks to the QUALITY of the pilots I fly against... If they're scattered between too many classes then I'm not really getting a chance to fly against the best, am I? --Noel |
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