SENIORS CONTEST

Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

OK Devil's advocate stuff...

At least on a 50' finish you can be reasonably sure there is no glider below you
in your blind spot. When you are that low the only thing beneath you is ground,
and presumably you have good situational awareness relating to where it is going
;-)Effectively you remove one degre of freedom from your conflicting traffic
equation. Also - everyone knows what your intentions are, the moment you cross
the line. Not least important is the psychological effect of - "any stupidity
now is going to be in clear view" - one assumes this tends to focus the mind a
little.

With a higher / further finish you open up the options a little.

Actually, 50 ft is not particularily high... :-)

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Bruce" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when their's has become
established. For me, the "safety" equation more than balances the
"fun" equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options. Rember
"Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't work and it annoys
the pig."

OK Devil's advocate stuff...

At least on a 50' finish you can be reasonably sure there is no glider
below you in your blind spot. When you are that low the only thing beneath
you is ground, and presumably you have good situational awareness relating
to where it is going ;-)Effectively you remove one degre of freedom from
your conflicting traffic equation. Also - everyone knows what your
intentions are, the moment you cross the line. Not least important is the
psychological effect of - "any stupidity now is going to be in clear
view" - one assumes this tends to focus the mind a little.

With a higher / further finish you open up the options a little.

Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

Any time you divide a group at some breakpoint (like 55 years of age), the
means will be different; if there are more than a few on each side, they
are likely to be statistically significantly different from each other as
well.

For the Choice Reaction-time "contest" at the convention, the contestants
were fairly evenly divided with 101 competitors in the 55 class and 88 in
the seniors. The mean ages were 66.26 vs. 42.59 (p0.000). If you drop the
"juniors" (age26), you raise the mean for the 55 class to 45.44.

The usual disclaimers, of course, apply.

Ray Warshaw
1LK


"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

I don't understand the talk about "conflicts" in the finish cylinder.
Everybody is inbound on a radial, heading for the center of the
cylinder, when you reach 1 mile, your clock stops. Where is the
conflict? Lots of sky out there, 5280 X 3.1416 X 2 = 33,175 feet around
it, each radial = 91 feet at 1 mile. There is no "head-on" conflict,
because the guy coming at you is on the other side of the cylinder
which is 2 miles away. And we don't have my favorite little jewel,
"hooking the gate".
Let me take a crack at the numbers; The finish line is 1000 meters
(3281 feet), but we don't use all of it because we aim for the closest
corner, when straight on, we center punch it at the GPS coordinates. So
lets divide the finish line by 8 to get 410 feet which I will call the
target area (area where a conflict might happen).
The finish cylinder circumference is 33,175, but lets take the worst
case where everybody is coming from the same turn point and divide it
by the same factor of 8 to give us the distance in the 45 degree hunk
of pie we're all headed for. That's 4147feet and almost exactly 10
times more distance in the cylinder target area as in the finish line
target area. I'm going to say there is 10 times more chance of a
conflict at the finish line than there is at the finish cylinder
JJ

Err, okay...so does that mean they are actually an
older group at the seniors? I don't see to many spring-chickens
in the 15-Standard-Open Classes.



At 00:00 18 March 2005, Raphael Warshaw wrote:
Any time you divide a group at some breakpoint (like
55 years of age), the
means will be different; if there are more than a
few on each side, they
are likely to be statistically significantly different
from each other as
well.

For the Choice Reaction-time 'contest' at the convention,
the contestants
were fairly evenly divided with 101 competitors in
the 0.000). If you drop the
'juniors' (age wrote in
message ...
Whille we r on the subject of the Senior's Contest....has
anyone analyzed the average age for these guys vs
a
'regular' contest...

Is there in fact any significant average age difference
between them?




At 20:00 17 March 2005, John Sinclair wrote:
Hi Gary,
I have no illusions about changing the mind-set of
the Neanderthals. I'm continuing this discussion in
the hope that contest managers and CD's will see the
potential dangers in using the finish gate. Who knows,
maybe a Director or two might just be listening, or
even the rules committee?
JJ

At 05:30 17 March 2005, wrote:
Emotion tends to remove the analytical, I have found
it is very
difficult to convince anyone of your position when
their's has become
established. For me, the 'safety' equation more than
balances the
'fun' equation. When you are finishing at 50 feet
and 150 mph and
something goes wrong there really aren't too many options.
Rember
'Don't try to teach a pig to sing, it probably won't
work and it annoys
the pig.'

Disagree JJ. The exact same scenario is possible - even more likely in
the finish cylinder. One of the more recent weaknesses of the finish
line was introduced by GPS. The rules now state that the finish is
based on your trace and not whether or not you turned inside a physical
feature. To my mind, this is proof positive that our rules makers
aren't thinking their decisions through carefully, but are acting based
on technological possibility and ground crew convenience. I, for one,
don't check the panel for anything but airspeed once I've committed to
a gate finish. I can judge my altitude well enough, and I'm much more
interested in traffic than which way the nav arrow is pointing. Not the
case in the cylinder. I've flown through the latter enough now to know
I'm not comfortable with the amount of panel time I need to plan
execute my finish.

BTW, here's one of the hazards of flying empty. You are much more
visible with your comet tail in the finish gate/cylinder.

Gosh, as all the legends get older, this sport sure is getting prissy.
I'm all for safe... but sterile? ;-)

Use a 30 degree course variance from the midpoint of the final leg (15
degrees each side of nominal) of an AST for 10 sailplanes 20 miles out
approaching a 1 sm radius cyclinder. There will be an arc on the face
of the cylinders described by their course to the midpoint of the
cylinder. If they all arrive at the same time and the same altitude,
what is their separation? Sorry, I've got time to pose the question,
but not enough to answer it. And Andy makes a good point, when they
call 4 miles... 4 miles from what?

Cheers,

OC