Hi Ross,
In general, a great and considered overview of the situation, and I
certainly concur with the majority of your views.
Re Having just one big nationals : We have just concluded the Sports
Nationals at Waikerie, where the gliders in that (unlimited), class were
able to use water ballast. For whatever the reason, it was conclusively
demonstrated that your conclusion in the 2nd last paragraph was NOT in fact
the reality of the matter. If this surprised you, let me say I too found
the reality somewhat unexpected. Conditions ranged from very strong to
extremely weak and yet the 15m span ships prevailed. It would appear that
pilot ability can overcome theoretical disadvantages.
Comments?
Regards,
Gary
From: aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net
[mailto:aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net] On Behalf Of Ross McLean
Sent: Sunday, 2 February 2014 7:27 PM
To: 'Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.'
Cc: go_soar...@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] The nationals: a proposal
Hi Adam
Firstly, congratulations on asking the hard questions. You have clearly put
some thought into it and you are passionate about your sport. I will be
very interested to hear/see other pilots point of view on your suggestions.
My opinion differs from yours however, but nothing in this email should be
construed as criticism of or disagreement with your ideas but simply as my
personal point of view and I strongly encourage you to continue thinking
outside the box on these ideas.
As a current Standard Class Nationals competitor and former Chair of the
NCC, I have grappled with a number of the points you raise and have
discussed a number of the solutions you propose with both the NCC and Sports
Committee members during my past tenure and so I hope to be able to clearly
express an informed view for you.
Just to get some perspective on how the GFA funding should be spent. First
thing to say is that the GFA exists to serve the entire gliding community in
Australia. It is this broad community who pay the bulk of the money that
funds the GFA. Of this broad community there are a minority who choose to
participate in Gliding Competitions. These competitors pay an additional
levy to GFA (part of the competition fee) which goes to support the
International Competitors and usually there is an additional cost to
competitors to pay for enough tugs to arrive to run the comp effectively.
Of this minority of gliding competitors there is quite a small group that
are eligible/interested/able to compete Internationally. Of the entire GFA
community there are only about ten or 12 competitors selected to compete
internationally.
National Gliding Competitions and International Teams Selection:
The National Gliding Competitions are held each year in order to establish
who are the best *competition glider pilots* in the country. These
competitions have nothing at all to do with International Team Selection.
Coincidentally, at the moment the ITC does however use the results from
these competitions as a convenient benchmark to assist in selecting the
International Teams.
Gliding in Australia is oversubscribed with competitions:
Hooray!! It is no coincidence that the competition scene has grown from
being almost non-existent a few short years ago, to now being almost
oversubscribed (a very healthy and good situation). The introduction of
handicaps and the honing of the rules to eliminate inequities and set a
level playing field, along with a strong push for formal Cross Country
Coaching and encouraging the Junior Gliding movement, has resulted in the
current very healthy competition scene.
Pair Flying at National Championships:
The idea of implementing rules and processes into the National Competitions
that are focussed solely on team selection or pair flying training has been
discussed for many years and is not supported at all by the greater
competition pilot community and rightly so. Of the 52 weeks of each year
there are only two weeks that do not allow pair flying, they are the two
weeks of National Competition. The competitions do not exist to serve the
needs of the dozen or so elite International Competitors and nor should
they.
Combining Classes:
The 15m Racing Class and the Open Class have long been the least well
represented classes. I personally think this is a great shame and don't
really understand why that is the case. When competition organisers are
forced to combine 15m and Standard and 18m and Open, nobody is really happy
about it. It is not a solution which will see those two classes grow in
their own right. In fact quite the opposite. The 15m flapped guys don't
like being whipped by unflapped LS8's as occurred at the Kingaroy MultiClass
Nationals and the Open Class guys hate getting whipped by the 18m gliders,
but it is the inevitable outcome when you combine these classes in
Australia. There are two ways in which the current situation can be
