At 12:44 PM 8/12/2002, Paul Breed wrote: >The real danger to this format is that any quest for maximum altitude >will result in pilots flying to altitudes that are unsafe. > >Unsafe, because they are too far away. >Unsafe because you are high enough to interfere with regular full size air >traffic. >Unsafe because one would want to maximize the dive back down speed, >high speed missiles loosing their wings and impacting randomly around the >pits would be very bad.
Really, we are not breaking any new ground here. These things are common occurrences in sailplane contests. Not that we are being unsafe, but we already fly to the limits of our vision, and people burn off big altitude with dives all the time. We just need to have the same common sense we always practice at contests. >With GPS one could add some additional tasks to make the event more >challenging. > >Limit the boundary that you can fly in. This would require electronic telemetry feedback to the pilot and I don't want to go there in a contest environment. >Make it altitude gain from the 1st minute of flight, >this would eliminate the whole zoom launch, gorilla tow motor problem. I would like to include launch height as it's a part of every sailplane contest. There is more skill to launching high than standing on the pedal. Just like a normal TD contest in dead or light air, it might be the only difference between winning the round. >Add some precision..... > Pilots put in bids, I can gain 5Kft in 10 minutes, > Hitting within 5% of your bid is worth something, >this would add the skill of predicting the performance given the >conditions before flying. Interesting, but it would slow down the contest as pilots would have to report it somehow before the round just starts. >Lots of possibilities... Agreed! 8-) Jim Downers Grove, IL Member of the Chicago SOAR club, AMA 592537 LSF 7560 Level III ICQ 6997780 R/C Soaring Page at www.jimbacus.net RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
