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#11
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 12:38*pm, John Cochrane
wrote: So it seems those who resisted the establishment of a bona fide Club Class here in the U.S. have now *******ized it. How utterly inane and comically predictable! Ray Cornay The pilot ranking list shows Ray Cornay flew an LS4 in Region 5 South in 2008, but has not flown any sports class nationals. (I don't have "Mike's" last name.) Ray has snarky things to say about people Dear Mr, Cochrane With all due respect, only one I see making snarky commentrs seems to be you. If you support this proposal, then defend it on the merits, No need for personal invectives. Someone please explain if this change is allowed to go through, then what is the point of club class in the US? How long is a resonalble period to get a new comp class established? Is it reasonable to give up after a couple years, especially given the current economic environment many of us face? Best regards, Chuck Patterson Regaion 5 (Who was looking forward to flying in club class, until now.......) |
#12
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
Just another "not invented here" response from the U.S. Soaring
Community and the powers that be. I am saddened, but not surprised. The more and more I mull this decision over in my head, the more and more I beleive in my heart that it is "class warfare" - literally. If you cannot afford at least a $60k-$80k+++ glider, a bright shniy Cobra trailer, the cost to insure them, the cost of all the latest instruments - then just stay out of our way and let the rich boys/sons of rich boys show you how racing is really done. I'd like to remind erveryone AND the rules/US Team committees of the purpose of the FAI for developing the "Club Class" (I may not have the language 100% correct, but the ideas are). 1) To preserve the value of older racing gliders 2) To offer an "affordable" level of racing that includes racing a the highest level - the World Championships With this decision to effectively ditch the Club Class concept for both a US nationals and for US Team pilot selection, the RC and US Team Committee have rejected these two seemingly good ideas for these times of economic uncertainty and difficulty in attracting youth/ younger (say under 45 years old) pilots to racing. Just to be clear, "Club Class" does not aim to take advantage of huge european glider club's fleets of older gliders as the name and discussions here may imply. In fact, many euro glider clubs have gone right past these older ships and filled their fleets with even newer glass single seat ships. The fact is that to be really competitive in Club Class, any pilot in the world had to make a $$$ commitment to these older ships with all their age and flaws. But it is a great deal less $$$'s than a new ASG-29. Rather, "Club Class" is simply the name given to the concept by the IGC, not a name given to what was actually happening. In fact, very few if any pilots showed up at any Club Class worlds in ships they just picked-up/borrowed from their club's hangars. People made the concious choice to focus on this class, and to spend a lot less money doing it. If people had the choice here, maybe they would have done the same. We will never know because the concept was an orphan idea from the get-go here in the U.S. The "powers that be" had gotten out of these ships long ago and had/have no interest in preserving the value and racing utitility of these gliders If there are not 100's if not 1,000's of these type of ships here in the U.S. then someone please correct me right now. Whether or not US Clubs fly these ships in their fleets, there is a huge pool of potential ships out there to be raced and this decision just makes this all the more unlikely. I, personally, would like to send a big thank you to these two committees for thinking about the value of my club class glider, and the development of lower cost solutions for myself AND those not so well funded. I feel very catered to now... As do the owners of the many hundereds, if not thousands of club class gliders here in the U.S. In conclusion, the biggest implication and driving idea behind these changes seems to be that by opeing in up selection to every pilot and (nearly) every glider, then we will magically get better results in this class. The further implication being that the pilots we have sent to the Club Class WGC's have been sub-standard compared to those we have sent to the "FAI" Classes. Well I think that we should be aiming for much better results in EVERY class, every time, rather than ditching a concept because it did not work out. I humbly ask the two committees to critically review the results from this years two WGC's. One of, if not the, highest placing pilot was in Club Class. He got there flying Club Class ships despite having to fly against newer ships that have CLEAR advantages in certain conditions no matter what the handicaps are in the US Sports Nationals. Congratualtions to a terrific job Sean! What the h--l happened to everyone in the FAI Classes? Maybe the conclusion we should be taking away is that to better prepare U.S. pilots for racing at the WGC-level, we should be having our racing system conform to how everyone else flies contests, including by making a commitment to a stand alone club class. The one good thing about this is that maybe Sports Class, with many more "hot" ships and "hot" pilots, will get to fly Uvalde someday.... Or PROBABLY NOT.... A Saddened, Tim EY P.S. Maybe we should just disregard class specific scoring for U.S. team selection and go with straight percentage scores and with all national scores merged - this would allow for an East West uber Natioanals as well. It would be easy, and then put the best scoring 12 pilots in contention for the 12 WGC slots every WGC-cycle... I am now putting my asbestos suit on |
#13
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 10:38*am, John Cochrane
wrote: So it seems those who resisted the establishment of a bona fide Club Class here in the U.S. have now *******ized it. How utterly inane and comically predictable! Ray Cornay The pilot ranking list shows Ray Cornay flew an LS4 in Region 5 South in 2008, but has not flown any sports class nationals. (I don't have "Mike's" last name.) Ray has snarky things to say about people "resisting the establishment of a bona fide club class", but when we ran a club class contest in region 5 south 2009, he didn't show up. And that's the basic problem. Everyone loves the idea of 50 new pilots duking it out in club class gliders to get on the world team in the abstract. Alas, it didn't happen in reality. Exactly one *eligible pilot/glider showed up two years in a row at sports nationals. People with access to better gliders don't borrow a standard cirrus for their two week gliding vacations just because some rule said so. And people like Ray, for whom this whole thing was designed, do not show up. Before spouting off *we should all go look at the sports class results athttp://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/ContestResultsFullDetail.as.... and at the US team ranking list athttp://soaringweb.org/US_Team/HomePage.html (I gather the updated versions including this year's results will be up soon.) These are the sad facts that the US team committee has to deal with.Should we really send pilots to the worlds based on these results? Look hard and think what you would do. The SSA built it, they don't come. At some point you face reality. The claim that anyone at the US team or rules committee "resisted" club class is also not founded. *Two club class contests have been held. Anyone who wants to organize one is welcome to do it. We'll chalk Ray up as a volunteer to CD the next one. No, the RC did not destroy the single most successful contest class in the US (sports class) by passing a rule saying that 2/3 (yes, 2/3) of the gliders who actually show up can't fly, all based on an unproven theory. *The SSA came close, by saying that 2/3 of those who show up can't earn team points. We all should learn from this good but unsuccessful idea and the world class debacle: you need to grow and show popularity of a contest class before you commit to it. If you want club class to succeed, put on a club class regional or super regional, and show up! Disclaimer: I had no part in the US team decision, nor do I speak for the rules committee -- my opinions only. John Cochrane I completely agreee with the points that Tim Taylor makes. To suddenly change the rules by which members are selected for the world team in the middle of the process is wrong. There is at least one pilot, Tim Taylor, that had access to a better glider (his ASW-27) and borrowed a Standard Jantar for his two week vacation to compete in the Sports Class nationals in order to try to make the world team because some rule said so. I think you will find that the top competitors flying club class gliders in the Sports Class nationals are as dedicated as any of those in the FAI class nationals. If you look at the numbers, at the Parowan nationals this summer there were 14 competitors flying gliders that qualify for world team Club Class ranking. This is 2 more that either the number of competitors in the Open or Standard Class nationals this year and twice as many as in the World Class nationals. By John Cochrane's reasoning, based on the numbers, we should combine the rankings from Open, Standard and World Class nationals to be used to qualify anyone for postions on the world team in any of the three classes, regardless of the class they competed in to get the ranking. This would be no different that what is being proposed in allowing qualification using a current production racing glider, but at the World meet being only able to race in an ASW20 at best, based on the IGC 2010 Club Class list, http://www.fai.org/gliding/system/files/handicaps.pdf. When the US club class restrictions were first introduced in 2007, the team committee drafted a letter explaining the reasoning, http://www.ssa.org/UsTeam/ustc%20pdf...%20Change..pdf. Part of this letter is as follows: "Currently in international competition, the choice of gliders for Club Class (IGC-CC) contests, the equivalent of U.S. Sports Class (US-SC) contests, is limited to those whose performance is similar to fiberglass, Standard Class and 15 meter sailplanes of the late 1960’s and 1970’s (e.g., LS-1f, Std. Cirrus, PIK-20, and ASW-20). This is in contrast to the current practice in U.S. Sports Class competition, where gliders of any performance level may compete; this range includes the latest, most efficient Open Class gliders (e.g., Nimbus 4), to early, post-war generation gliders (e.g., Schweitzer 1-20 and Schleicher Ka-4). Gliders of significantly different performance require significantly different flying techniques, tactics, and strategies in competition to be successful. While gliders are handicapped in both IGC-CC and US-SC competition, there is concern that U.S. pilots who might qualify in either very high or very low performance gliders may be at a significant disadvantage at a World Gliding Championship (WGC) when obliged to compete in the mid-range performing gliders used in IGC-CC competition." I don't think there has been a sudden change in opinion in that qualifying in one performance class and suddenly moving to a different performance class at the WGC will not cause problems. If the US teams are going to do well at the world meets, we need to move more to adopting the international rules, especially at the Nationals, rather than moving farther away from them. Bob Faris |
#14
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 10:33*am, John Cochrane
wrote: My name is Mike Carris and I have just purchased, with a partner, an old forgotten PIK 20B that will take at least 500 total hours to get flying again. I did this for one reason, to fly in the Club Class, which is an FAI event, except in the USA. Now, there will be no club class, just another opportunity, it seems, *for a very few *people that can afford it, to get another chance to be on a world team. *Why not allow the Club Class to flourish as it was intened. Soaring in the USA takes a step backwards with this decision. Do something for the sport, you know the one that does not require mega bucks to compete in. Mike Carris "0" Megabucks are not required to compete in sports class. Dave Stephenson had a habit of crushing us with KA6 and Fokas; Tim McAllister has won in a Libelle. Sports class is handicapped. The handicaps not only work, they favor older gliders. *The tasking guidelines also favor the older gliders. Tasks are supposed to be set for a standard cirrus, and if that's too short for a nimbus 4, too bad. Ray Gimmey didn't buy his way from nowhere to sports class dominance with an ASG29, he happens to be a pretty good pilot too! *Read the proposal -- this said nothing about club class in the US, it said only something about how the US team will select pilots for the world team. There is and will be a club class anytime someone wants to organize and go to a club class event. Which I hope you will do; vibrant club class racing in the US would be great to see. John Cochrane Why wasn't there a Club Class Nationals in 2010? It stands to reason that if there is sufficient interest on the part of pilots of Club Class equipment to compete for national team spots we'd be able to sustain at least one contest per year to make it happen. TIm did a nice job with his borrowed Jantar at the Sports Nationals this year. I think his point about mixed performance across gliders in the contest is partly true. On consistent days with streeting and winds less than 20-25 mph the Jantar was hard to beat. For those of us flying current generation gliders the difference in performance just couldn't make up for the handicap. On windy days with limited lift bands and long glides between good lift lower performance could make it hard to get that next climb and then all the handicap in the world couldn't help you. That said, the last day was in the second category and was won by a very ably flown Libelle. The challenging thing from my perspective is that we don't have enough pilots willing to do what Tim did - rent, borrow or buy a Club Class glider to compete in Sports Class Nationals on a consistent basis. What it means is we send people to the worlds chosen from a limited competitive set. It's true that it is different flying Club Class than current generation FAI class. However, I think the competitive disadvantage of changing glider types for the worlds (by picking the team from the full Sports Class) is outweighed by the reduced size of the pool of pilots competing for spots on the team (when you limit the team only to pilots flying Club Class gliders). 9B |
#15
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
And a fine hello to you, too, Mr. Cochrane:
Irrespective of anyone's history of participation, this decision smells just like yet another justification to the benefit of those best equipped and consequently knees squarely in the nuts those who worked so hard to get Club Class going in this country. It isn't enough that 18m has its own lightly participated class in which to go on to Worlds? Expense isn't already enough a barrier to entry for you? So now it's legit to encroach upon the opportunities of a lesser performing class? Hence, the resultant reactions to which both Mike and Chuck allude. Regards, Ray Cornay |
#16
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 4:45*am, "John Godfrey (QT)"
wrote: * * * * * * * * The US Team Committee, in cooperation with the Rules Committee and based on responses received through the on-line competition survey conducted last year, has decided to recommend to the SSA Board of Directors at its winter meeting that they approve amendment to the Selection Policy for US Club Class Teams selected for WGC participation starting in 2011. * * * * * * * * 1) We will no longer restrict eligibility to pilots who have not participated in a previous WGC event, i.e. all participants in Sports Class Nationals flying eligible gliders will be eligible * * * * * * * * 2) We will broaden the list of gliders which may be flown to generate eligible scores for Club Class selection in our Sports Class Nationals. *It is anticipated that most Standard, 15 Meter, and 18 Meter gliders will be accommodated. * * * * * * * * We are currently rewriting our Selection Policy to reflect these changes and will publish the text in draft form as soon as possible. A draft Eligible Glider List will be also be produced incorporating these changes. If approved, our selection next fall for the year two pilot for the 2012 WGC will be made on this basis. * * * * * * * * These proposed changes do not affect selection of the year one pilot - i.e. selected two years in advance of the 2012 Sports Class WGC in Argentina, provided as currently required that the pilot participates in the 2011 pre-World contest there. * * * * * * * * Given that these changes are being proposed, we wanted to disseminate the news *as early as possible so that interested pilots could plan their 2011 competition schedules accordingly For the Committee DJ Can someone from the Rule Committee and/or the Team Selection Committee please state what the objective for this rule change, who(m) requested the change, and what alternatives and proposals were discussed? Thanks Ron Gleason |
#17
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 10:46*am, Andy wrote:
On Sep 18, 9:22*am, Tim Taylor wrote: *A fundamental error in the scoring program is a something that almost no one is going to catch in the midst of a contest. Tim What error in the scoring program? I heard something about this a while ago. I hope the details will come out now! Andy (GY) |
#18
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 5:14*pm, Ray Jay wrote:
And a fine hello to you, too, Mr. Cochrane: Irrespective of anyone's history of participation, this decision smells just like yet another justification to the benefit of those best equipped and consequently knees squarely in the nuts those who worked so hard to get Club Class going in this country. It isn't enough that 18m has its own lightly participated class in which to go on to Worlds? Expense isn't already enough a barrier to entry for you? So now it's legit to encroach upon the opportunities of a lesser performing class? Hence, the resultant reactions to which both Mike and Chuck allude. Regards, Ray Cornay There are number of good points being made here, but one I just can't get is "the glider makes the winner" in a handicapped class. This is the place where that argument carries the least weight 1. At the 2009 Sports Nationals, only 14 of 35 gliders were club class eligible. Only 2 of the top 10 finishers were club class eligible. 2. At the 2010 Sports Nationals, only 15 of 42 gliders were club class eligible. Only 2 of the top 10 finishers were club class eligible. So many very good pilots are being excluded from the club competition simply because of the glider they are flying. Most pilots cannot afford more than one glider, and once they have saved mightily to get their prized 27, 29 or whatever are not likely to sell it to get a club ship. So many very good pilots are being excluded for what amounts to financial reasons. Our most experienced and accomplished team pilots generally agree that whatever disadvantages exist if you compete in a club class ship after winning in a say 27 or 29 are far outweighed by the smaller pool of pilots from which the team can be drawn. Now it may be true that handicaps need more work to keep the playing field level, but I believe that the new approach moves us from excluding some of our best pilots based on finances and becomes much more inclusive. It is really good that we are getting vigorous engagement on this with 4 months to go before the proposal goes before the SSA board for a vote. We all want a fair and inclusive competition environment that attracts increased participation and develops pilots that are competitive at the worlds. John Godfrey (QT) US Rules Committee |
#19
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team Selection Policy Changes
Hey... I have an idea!! This same technique should be use to determine the US World Class team. It is a shame that so many good pilots are excluded from international World Class competition simply because they don't own a PW-5!!!
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#20
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Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team SelectionPolicy Changes
On Sep 18, 4:53*pm, "John Godfrey (QT)"
wrote: On Sep 18, 5:14*pm, Ray Jay wrote: And a fine hello to you, too, Mr. Cochrane: Irrespective of anyone's history of participation, this decision smells just like yet another justification to the benefit of those best equipped and consequently knees squarely in the nuts those who worked so hard to get Club Class going in this country. It isn't enough that 18m has its own lightly participated class in which to go on to Worlds? Expense isn't already enough a barrier to entry for you? So now it's legit to encroach upon the opportunities of a lesser performing class? Hence, the resultant reactions to which both Mike and Chuck allude. Regards, Ray Cornay There are number of good points being made here, but one I just can't get is "the glider makes the winner" in a handicapped class. This is the place where that argument carries the least weight 1. At the 2009 Sports Nationals, only 14 of 35 gliders were club class eligible. Only 2 of the top 10 finishers were club class eligible. 2. At the 2010 Sports Nationals, only 15 of 42 gliders were club class eligible. Only 2 of the top 10 finishers were club class eligible. So many very good pilots are being excluded from the club competition simply because of the glider they are flying. *Most pilots cannot afford more than one glider, and once they have saved mightily to get their prized 27, 29 or whatever are not likely to sell it to get a club ship. So many very good pilots are being excluded for what amounts to financial reasons. Our most experienced and accomplished team pilots generally agree that whatever disadvantages exist if you compete in a club class ship after winning in a say 27 or 29 are far outweighed by the smaller pool of pilots from which the team can be drawn. Now it may be true that handicaps need more work to keep the playing field level, but I believe that the new approach moves us from excluding some of our best pilots based on finances and becomes much more inclusive. It is really good that we are getting vigorous engagement on this with 4 months to go before the proposal goes before the SSA board for a vote. *We all want a fair and inclusive competition environment that attracts increased participation and develops pilots that are competitive at the worlds. John Godfrey (QT) US Rules Committee- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - "So many very good pilots are being excluded from the club competition simply because of the glider they are flying. Most pilots cannot afford more than one glider, and once they have saved mightily to get their prized 27, 29 or whatever are not likely to sell it to get a club ship. So many very good pilots are being excluded for what amounts to financial reasons. " Good Grief! This is the attitude of the Rules Committee, when the folks with the above mentioned sailplanes can fly in Sports class, as well as their respective FAI class? Mind boggle 101 I guess I am not interested in this anymore. Mike "0" |
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