Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Gap Parameters

Pilots in awe over the new gap parameters.... There has been a big discussion on the scoring parametres that are being used here in this comp. For some reason the have changed the parametres from 40 miles nominal distance to 60 miles nominal distance and a minimum of 2.5 hrs nominal time. We had this problem down at Florida ridge and I thought I made it clear to Davis how the system worked but he had a difference of opinion. I really did not think that we would have this issue here at such a well organised event like the Flytec meet. However someone got into david glover's ear before the meet and told him that he should up the parameters as the weather was looking good and we would fly long distances. Well their hopes were ruined on the first task where the longest flight was like 50 kms despite being in the air for 5 hrs we received only 300 points. This caused a huge up roar the next day and there was a big debate that lead no where, as the comp had already started there was no way to change the parameters for the up coming days. I tried explaining to everyone what would happen and it seemed that no one wanted to leave it as it was especially the top pilots who understood what effects it would have on the comp results. In a nut shell it will basically compress our scores and make it harder for the top pilots to pull away on points, yet at the same time it will not effect you as bad when you have a bad day especially if it is on a far from perfect day like the first day. We will be very lucky to see a 1,000 point day at this meet........ummm