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#11
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Shorter Competitions
Are all "serious" events in the US (even Regionals) 7+ days long? --Noel Hi Noel, I think very few regionals are more than 7 days. Region 8 is typically Sunday through Saturday over the 4th of July weekend. They have tried the split weekend contest before, but I believe they found the continuous contest had better participation and was easier to plan for. I know I prefer the continuous contest, but then I have to drive 300 miles one way to get to it. 2009 Region 8 is scheduled to have the 18 meter nationals. which will be 10 days Tuesday through the following Thursday over the 4th of July weekend. I suspect that they will run a shorter Sports Class Regional contest during the same time. Brian. |
#12
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Shorter Competitions
On Sep 24, 9:47*pm, Tuno wrote:
Noel, All of the four regional contests I've attended had the same schedule -- practice day on a Sunday followed by six contest days. This allowed travel days on the sandwiching Saturday and Sunday. I've always thought it was an ideal schedule. A tremendous amount of work goes into assembling the staff and towplanes that make it happen, and doing that for anything less than 5 or 6 contest days just doesn't make sense. I'm fortunate to live in Arizona where for years we've had the Arizona Soaring Association's contest series, which covers a number of weekends throughout the soaring season, at several locations around Arizona. The club at El Tiro recently started their own similar series. If your area doesn't have something similar, I highly encourage you to talk to other pilots about organizing one. All it takes is a little leadership and a few pilots who want to do a little organized contest flying. I'm happy to share the Excel spreadsheet we use for collating the ASA series scores with any other club that's interested. -ted ASG28½ "2NO" In my experience contests fall into two broad categories (personally I quite like them both). 1) Concentrated flying contests. These typically are sanctioned events. They tend to have broader "cachement areas" and therefore larger fields of competitors. Because of this the ratio of flying time to driving time matters as does the need to bridge across patches of bad weather. UH described the primary logic - maximize the number of contest days that fit in a week of vacation (typically Su-Sa plus a practice day). 2) Distributed flying contests. These typically have 10-20 flying days spread over a season's worth of weekends - though there are other formats. The idea here is to eliminate the need for vacation days. The cachement area is more or less the same as for weekend flying since the ratio of driving to flying can get quite high if you are coming from any distance. The trick here is that it's pretty hard for contestants to commit to 5-10 weekends 3-6 months in advance so generally you only count a competitors best 6 out of 10 days, 12 out of 20 days, etc. This gives some advantage to the pilots who can commit to more days but people live with that fact without complaining (usually). I'm sure there are other formats that address the need to drop some days. I've flown the ASA series off and on since the mid-80s and I have to say it is a great way to get new racing pilots into the game - there is even a "B class" that is explicitly for newbies. It's also a great way to nurture a racing fraternity within a broader soaring community. A variation is the "short format" distributed flying event. The ASA Southwest Soaring Championship comes to mind. I've seen this most frequently as two consecutive weekends where one is a three day weekend. Again the idea is to require zero vacation time so as to maximize local participation and maybe bring in a pilot or two from slightly further away. ASA also holds this event as part of the season long series with separate scoring. This format is a good way to try to ignite local contest flying that is a step beyond OLC in terms of head- to-head racing, but is not quite as much work and commitment as the season-long format. 9B |
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