Jack; Chuck is absolutely right on this issue. RES gliders have difficulty maintaining optimum line up during approach. Once off the perfect approach heading, correcting back to center line is extremely difficult. Consequently, loss of landing points is most likely to occur from lateral displacement. Although what you say is true about the relative size of the area for a perfect landing score, that's largely irrelevant in RES competition. Let's take a much more likely case where you're displaced two feet (24") from the center line. With the current runway landing, that's going to cost you 23 landing points. If the landing were being done to a spot on a standard 25 foot AMA tape, that same landing would only cost you 8 landing points. The bias becomes even more extreme as you're farther from the runway centerline. Assume your nose is six feet from runway centerline after landing. With a runway landing, you'll lose 71 landing points whereas the same landing on a tape only costs 24 points. IOW, landing points decrement at a three to one ratio from lateral displacement during a runway instead of a spot landing.
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