Potential Club Class (US Sports Class) World Team Selection Policy Changes

In summary, if the working band is low, the thermals are widely
spaced, or the wind is blowing, no amount of speed handicapping will
help if you're sitting in a farmer's field.

P3

P3

Actually, that's not true. You do get distance points, and there are
other days. The handicaps for lower performance gliders include these
facts. On some days, they are sitting in a field while the nimbus 4
crosses a blue hole. On other days, they get to blast up and down the
cloudstreet while the nimbus 4 has to cross that big blue hole. On
other days, the sky is even, but the big wings have a handicap deficit
that no amount of wingspan can overcome. The handicaps for high
performance gliders are much more than simple theory predicts, and
this is why.

Handicapped racing leads to more variation -- bigger point spreads on
different days. The main complaint is too much variation depending on
weather luck of the contest -- a valid complaint, addressed by
narrower handicap spreads as in club class. But it is not true that
that lower performance gliders do not have a level playing field (over
a long enough contest) that cannot be or is not addressed by
handicaps. Again, look at Tim McAlester and Dave Stephenson's
excellent in sports class in libelle, foka, ka6, against much better
gliders.

John Cochrane

On Sep 25, 5:13*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
In summary, if the working band is low, the thermals are widely
spaced, or the wind is blowing, no amount of speed handicapping will
help if you're sitting in a farmer's field.

P3
P3

Actually, that's not true. You do get distance points, and there are
other days. The handicaps for lower performance gliders include these
facts. On some days, they are sitting in a field while the nimbus 4
crosses a blue hole. On other days, they get to blast up and down the
cloudstreet while the nimbus 4 has to cross that big blue hole. On
other days, the sky is even, but the big wings have a handicap deficit
that *no amount of wingspan can overcome. *The handicaps for high
performance gliders are much more than simple theory predicts, and
this is why.

Handicapped racing leads to more variation -- bigger point spreads on
different days. The main complaint is too much variation depending on
weather luck of the contest -- a valid complaint, addressed by
narrower handicap spreads as in club class. But it is not true that
that lower performance gliders do not have a level playing field (over
a long enough contest) that cannot be or is not addressed by
handicaps. Again, look at Tim McAlester and Dave Stephenson's
excellent in sports class in libelle, foka, ka6, against much better
gliders.

John Cochrane

One thing we could think about is to increase the devaluation for days
with significant numbers of landouts - potentially based also on the
spread of handicaps in the contest. This would make dodgy days worth
even less than they are today. It also would probably require a modest
reduction in the handicaps for lower performing gliders to
compensate.

9B

1. Handicaps don't ever work over the range of performance
that we allow in the Sports Class.
2. Sport class will never allow for AST's, most common task flown
Internationally.

rk

One thing we could think about is to increase the devaluation for days
with significant numbers of landouts - potentially based also on the
spread of handicaps in the contest. This would make dodgy days worth
even less than they are today. It also would probably require a modest
reduction in the handicaps for lower performing gliders to
compensate.

9B

How would we ever get this right?

On Sep 25, 8:13*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
In summary, if the working band is low, the thermals are widely
spaced, or the wind is blowing, no amount of speed handicapping will
help if you're sitting in a farmer's field.

P3
P3

Actually, that's not true. You do get distance points, and there are
other days. The handicaps for lower performance gliders include these
facts. On some days, they are sitting in a field while the nimbus 4
crosses a blue hole. On other days, they get to blast up and down the
cloudstreet while the nimbus 4 has to cross that big blue hole. On
other days, the sky is even, but the big wings have a handicap deficit
that *no amount of wingspan can overcome. *The handicaps for high
performance gliders are much more than simple theory predicts, and
this is why.

Handicapped racing leads to more variation -- bigger point spreads on
different days. The main complaint is too much variation depending on
weather luck of the contest -- a valid complaint, addressed by
narrower handicap spreads as in club class. But it is not true that
that lower performance gliders do not have a level playing field (over
a long enough contest) that cannot be or is not addressed by
handicaps. Again, look at Tim McAlester and Dave Stephenson's
excellent in sports class in libelle, foka, ka6, against much better
gliders.

John Cochrane

John,
as you stated the key is to have a long enough contest. Obviously 3
(proposed) or 4 (current) days for valid nationals in not a
statistically representative number.

On Sep 25, 8:13*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
In summary, if the working band is low, the thermals are widely
spaced, or the wind is blowing, no amount of speed handicapping will
help if you're sitting in a farmer's field.

P3
P3

Actually, that's not true. You do get distance points, and there are
other days. The handicaps for lower performance gliders include these
facts. On some days, they are sitting in a field while the nimbus 4
crosses a blue hole. On other days, they get to blast up and down the
cloudstreet while the nimbus 4 has to cross that big blue hole. On
other days, the sky is even, but the big wings have a handicap deficit
that *no amount of wingspan can overcome. *The handicaps for high
performance gliders are much more than simple theory predicts, and
this is why.

Handicapped racing leads to more variation -- bigger point spreads on
different days. The main complaint is too much variation depending on
weather luck of the contest -- a valid complaint, addressed by
narrower handicap spreads as in club class. But it is not true that
that lower performance gliders do not have a level playing field (over
a long enough contest) that cannot be or is not addressed by
handicaps. Again, look at Tim McAlester and Dave Stephenson's
excellent in sports class in libelle, foka, ka6, against much better
gliders.

John Cochrane

John,

You've pretty much made the point for me. If the race result is
predicated on the type of weather in the contest (i.e. a big-wing
favorable weak weather contest or a consistently strong mid-handicap
favorable contest), then it's not really a race to determine the best
pilot. It's a race to determine which very good pilot happened to
bring the right glider to the race this time around. And, as a man of
numbers, you've certainly observed that the downside penalty of being
one of the few to land out on a weaker day results in a far greater
penalty than the upside of being 5% faster (handicapped) on high
completion days. The penalty for missing a single thermal on the one
or two weaker days of the contest when flying the gliders in the lower
end of the performance range is disproportionately large.

I grew up in a very competitive sports family, so I really do
understand that there are some pilots who will win pretty much
regardless of what equipment they're using. My mom used to say that
"Bjorn Borg could beat you with a broom handle". She was right. I
believe that many of our top pilots would also win a true Club Class
nationals. But, until they're flying in the same airmass using the
same tactics and dealing with the same performance parameters, it's
just a belief.

P3

On Sep 25, 6:09*pm, Andrzej Kobus wrote:
One thing we could think about is to increase the devaluation for days
with significant numbers of landouts - potentially based also on the
spread of handicaps in the contest. This would make dodgy days worth
even less than they are today. It also would probably require a modest
reduction in the handicaps for lower performing gliders to
compensate.

9B

How would we ever get this right?

We have plenty of contest history as input data. There are analytic
techniques to solve for that sort of thing. I expect you could trade
off one factor (handicap multiplier) against the other (devaluation
factor) to minimize the error between relative contest points in
sports class contests and relative seeding points.

I expect something like that is what we do today to establish glider
handicaps, just without the additional factor.

9B

On Sep 26, 10:30*am, Andy wrote:
On Sep 25, 6:09*pm, Andrzej Kobus wrote:

One thing we could think about is to increase the devaluation for days
with significant numbers of landouts - potentially based also on the
spread of handicaps in the contest. This would make dodgy days worth
even less than they are today. It also would probably require a modest
reduction in the handicaps for lower performing gliders to
compensate.

9B

How would we ever get this right?

We have plenty of contest history as input data. There are analytic
techniques to solve for that sort of thing. I expect you could trade
off one factor (handicap multiplier) against the other (devaluation
factor) to minimize the error between relative contest points in
sports class contests and relative seeding points.

I expect something like that is what we do today to establish glider
handicaps, just without the additional factor.

9B

Please no - multi-variable calculus not allowed in the scoring
algorithms! :-)

Seriously though, I think if there's any "flaw" in the US Competition
Rules process, it's that we have too many engineers and mathematicians
looking for a perfect solution to complex problems (I count myself in
that category by the way). As a management consultant, I'm sure
you've counseled clients in the beauty of KISS - Keep It Simple
Stupid. This strikes me as a KISS moment.

Handicaps on gliders are probably good enough to get an indicative
level of comparison. Obviously though, they're only as good as the
model they're based on. While the polar is (more or less) known/
knowable, the full range of conditions in a contest are, if not
infinite, at least pretty complex. While basic models account for
lift strength and height, I don't believe they can incorporate all of
the other things that go into a competition in anything but homogenous
conditions. Wind, unfriendly terrain, ridge flying, thermal
spacing, and a hundred other things affect the outcome of a
contest. While a group of gliders flying in "roughly" the same
performance bucket will be affected equally, ships at the outlier end
of the spectrum will be disproportionately impacted by any contests
where there are larger deviations from the norm in any of these
variables.

To give a simplistic/extreme example. We have a guy in our club who
flies a 1-26. For a while, he also owned an ASW-20. When he owned
the 20, he was always in the top 5 in both handicapped and
unhandicapped contests. He also routinely wins the 1-26 Nationals.
Now, put him in a 1-26 (with it's 1.6 handicap) flying against an
ASG-29, and he's likely to finish near the bottom of that contest if
there is even one weak day. Given that many of our nationals are
decided with only 4 or 5 days of flying, that makes it pretty unlikely
that a great pilot would be rewarded by flying the 1-26.

While that's probably the extreme example, it's useful for
illustrating the point. You have to draw a line somewhere in terms
of "bunching" ships into a handicapped class that's close enough to
eliminate the majority of the luck factor involved in having the right
ship for the conditions. For better or worse, the IGC has already
drawn that line, so why reinvent it?

To give a simplistic/extreme example. * We have a guy in our club who
flies a 1-26. *For a while, he also owned an ASW-20. * When he owned
the 20, he was always in the top 5 in both handicapped and
unhandicapped contests. *He also routinely wins the 1-26 Nationals.
Now, put him in a 1-26 (with it's 1.6 handicap) flying against an
ASG-29, and he's likely to finish near the bottom of that contest if
there is even one weak day. * Given that many of our nationals are
decided with only 4 or 5 days of flying, that makes it pretty unlikely
that a great pilot would be rewarded by flying the 1-26.

While that's probably the extreme example, it's useful for
illustrating the point. * You have to draw a line somewhere in terms
of "bunching" ships into a handicapped class that's close enough to
eliminate the majority of the luck factor involved in having the right
ship for the conditions. * For better or worse, the IGC has already
drawn that line, so why reinvent it?

I think there is a bit of a misconception here. You need to focus on
the whole contest, not just the particular day. The handicaps not only
try to compensate for speed differences on a consistent day, they also
try to compensate for the impossible days, and are pretty succcessful
at it. The high performance gliders have handicaps that are way too
punitive based on their polars. That is to compensate for their
greater chance of making it home, as well as a little bit of
affirmative action.

On (say) 1 out of 5 days, the 1-26 can't cross the blue hole, gap,
etc. and lands out and the asg 29 wins. On (say) 1 out of 5 days, the
1-26 gets to play on the local ridge / stay in the cloudstreet etc.
while the asg29 has to go cross some horrendous blue hole; the asg 29
finishes but with a terrible score. On (say) 3 out of 5 days, both
pilots make it home in consistent weather, but the 1-26 handicap is so
huge that it comes out ahead by 50 points or so. (This is pretty much
the story of the last sports nationals I competed in, substitute "KA6"
for "1-26" and "ASW27" for "ASG29")

Over a long contest, the two gliders even out if piloted equally well.
The issue is variance, not mean (yes, we are techies, are we not) A
contest with more consistent days favors the 1-26; a contest with more
weak days favors the ASG29, a contest with more days/tasks that allow
the 1-26 to stay in small areas of good weather favor it again.

Thus the real problem with a wide handicap range is not that one or
another kind of glider is favored on average, it is that there is even
more weather and task related luck than usual. Dave Stephenson did
great in sports class in Foka, Ka-6 and associated gliders, proving
those can compete. In part this was great piloting, in part it was a
bet on consistent weather.

Splittiing gliders up into narrower handicap ranges will certainly
produce races with less luck. On the other hand, it also produces
smaller contests. I'm dismayed that the average regional seems to have
7 gliders per class, and the average national seems to be struggling
to keep in the two digits.

If we had enough gliders, I'd be all for three classes -- "FAI" for
handicaps above 0.90 or so, "club" for the middle range, and "ex-word-
class" for handicaps below 1.0 or so. Spitting only in two by taking
out the middle -- "club" for 15 gliders in the mid range, and then
"sports" that keeps only the Nimbus 3 and 1-26, is not a good idea.
But we need more gliders....

John Cochrane

not everyone is concerned that the end to all contest is to crown the next
world team....I dare to suggest that relatively few of even the current
partisipants have a chance or even care that there is a potential to be on
a
world team....we're speaking of the sport of flying gliders and doing
something that actually in the scheme of all things is there to creat an
interest in fun....soaring contest are the social event for all of
soaring,
for what it's worth, the "fly-in" for glider pilots

Agreed. This thread started, however, as a discussion about a proposed
change in WGC team selection criteria for Club Class. If it's all
about fun then the proposed change in WGC team selection should be a
non-issue for most pilots.

I'd be quite happy to score Club Class as a subset of Sports Class
until such time that Club Class has grown enough to stand on its own
(that IS the proposition being put forward after all, that Club Class
will grow significantly). Then it might be worth the tradeoff of
leaving Duos and Arcuses and DG-1000s and Nimbus 2s and 3s and Grob
Twins and ASK-21s and Russias and Ka-8s without a class to fly in at a
number of regionals because there are too few of them.

I doubt there are many K8 pilots very seriously going to take these gliders
to regional contest.in fact, FWIW, few K8's in the US that ever leave the
local envoirment...Russia's and L33's could and should be in the World class
competitions since they were designed with this in mind..andit's obvious by
now that not enough PW5 owners are going to make world class contest more
than a handful of gliders without the inclusion of these other "world class
contenders"

Duo's, Arcuses, Nimbus 2's and 3's along with ASK21's are already "open
class" gliders aren't they? technically speaking they already ahve a
class....granted the K-21's aren't real serios contenders in this class but
so be it...neither are Blaniks and 2-33's..they have a specific job as
trainers..we never designed a racing class for Station wagon's in NASCAR
either ...being too broad in the idea of letting everyone play isn't ever
going to be entirely practical.if someone does show up with a 2-33 to a
contest then they can fly...and do what they can in the task but they aren't
goingto win either.and I supect they already knew this.



If you look at the actual numbers at regionals you find that the total
number of Sports/Club Class gliders often number around 5-8, more or
less evenly divided between Club and non-Club Class gliders. Dividing
it in two without generating significant growth would be ill-advised.
So, how do we prove that Club Class will grow without taking the fun
out by forcing large-scalle reshuffling of classes? (e.g. forcing
everyone fly Sports, or Open or 18M to try to get to enough
competitors to make a class). My suggestion, above, would be to score
and recognize the best scoring Club Class glider within Sports Class,
then you can prove the theory rather than just talk about it. No one
is going to make permanent changes to the rules without evidence that
the rationale for the change is valid. The rationale here is if we
separate out Club Class it will grow significantly.

it's more or less "if you build it they will come" .....we've resisted
building it for a long time and tried every type of scoring and cotest lay
out and most agreee it's never going to be perfect or fair as it cannot
be....



I am not sure what you mean when you say rule changes decrease
interest in flying contests. I'm sure many people resisted
introduction of GPS, new task types that no longer require a ground
crew, end of worm-burner finishes at zero feet, loss of redline starts
and introduction of Sports Class. But I would argue that all these
changes increased, rather than decreased interest in contest flying.
If we took your suggestion to end the tweaking of handicaps by
eliminating them then all those non-FAI or old generation gliders
would have to fly in Std, 15M, 18M or Open. I think that would be
less fun overall. There is no point to handicaps if you have to stick
with them despite evidence that they are off - these days it seems we
only correct handicaps for the occasional glider type that doesn't fly
often in competition.

even in the concept of Club Class there are handicaps....but there are
enough similarities in these glider types that a relaistic handicap can
allow all of the competitors to theoretically fly the same "fixed" tasks.


What we have right now is too few pilots flying across too many
classes - it creates problems for organizers - decreases fun for
competitors (IMO) and makes competitions less competitive. If adding
classes doesn't increase the ranks of competition pilots it weakens
the argument to do it in the first place.

absolutely.so why do we need a call (sports class) that involves the current
state of the art 15M, Standard and Open class gliders...they again already
have their competition class..
tim




9B

__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 5481 (20100926) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com





__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5481 (20100926) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com