Glider Racing in the future

TOPIC: "Racing in the Futu Should We Moderate the Impact of Technology?"

John Godfrey (QT) began competing in gliders in 1984. He was elected to the US Competition Rules Committee in 2008 and has chaired the committee since 2013. In addition he has served as Competition Director for National championships, Scorer for both International and US contests, and US Team Captain for the 2006 WGC.

John's key interest is in increasing participation by making/keeping racing fun and affordable for people like him (i.e., those unlikely to win a National). In addition to presenting a road map for coming technologies and their possible impact, he looks forward to thoughtful and lively interactions with the audience on these issues.

Thursday Feb. 18, 2016 2:30 - 3:15 PM
SSA Convention Greenville SC
www.ssaconvention.org

Flarm on, you flarming Flarmers
SF

You guys saving it up for John's talk? This is the future. Somebody say something snarky about the future.

SF

It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Le mardi 9 février 2016 10:03:23 UTC-5, Pat Russell a écrit*:
It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Easier to predict the past!!!!

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 8:13:23 PM UTC-5, SF wrote:
Somebody say something snarky about the future.

Why? "Moderating Technology" is really just trying to live in the past.

OLC, no electrons of any sort (steam gauges, no electric varios, cameras), and everyone's vision equalized at 20/40!

;-)

Real men and women, not boys and girls, could then win the races!

Just kidding. Old stuff is really a lot of fun to play with but, to get
serious, I like the new stuff!

On 2/9/2016 10:02 AM, smfidler wrote:
OLC, no electrons of any sort (steam gauges, no electric varios, cameras), and everyone's vision equalized at 20/40!

;-)

--
Dan, 5J

You know...and I hesitate to mention this...but you *could* try out some of the technologies of the future to see how it affects the quality of racing by using Condor.

If you set the visible distance of gliders to max, you have a rough FLARM analog. If you allow thermal helpers to be turned on without penalty, you have thermal detectors.

It would be interesting to have the US Nightly group fly with those options on several tasks and see if the usual winners remain at the top.

If the concern is that new technologies take the challenge out of the race, you'd have a bit of an idea of whether its true or whether the competition shifts to a different set of factors.

On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 11:14:50 AM UTC-5, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 8:13:23 PM UTC-5, SF wrote:
Somebody say something snarky about the future.

Why? "Moderating Technology" is really just trying to live in the past.

It seems to me that it is not unreasonable to look at technological change and consider the favorable and unfavorable aspects of those changes so that participants can make informed decisions about them.
Otherwise it is only the vocal few that drive the process.
UH

Truth is, for me, as long as it's all the same (15, 18, Club, etc) then I would be happy. I really don't care if we have computers.