Soaring Contest - Open versus RES

[Bierlein]

I have volenteered to be a CD at an up and comming soring contest.

I am proposing on running open and res planes against each other but would like to handicap them.

I would appreciate any feed back on how to hadicap these two classes.

AL B

[Ollie]

The unlimited class ships have a landing advantage over the RES models. You can make the landing task more difficult for the unlimited ships by making the landing zone smaller for them or by adding landing bonus points to the RES class depending on the type of landing task you plan to use.

How much of an advantage the unlimited class has over the RES class in the duration task depends on the soaring conditions. If the wind is less than 5 MPH, then the advantage is small or zero. If the wind is expected to be stronger than about 5 MPH, then the RES ships could be given a bonus to the duration part of their score. The bonus could be based on the difference between the average duration score of all the RES class contestants compared to the average duration score of all the unlimited class contestants. The big disadvantage of this approach is that there has to be time allowed after the end of the last round to compute all the final scores. Also, if the average skill level of the RES pilots is much above the average skill level of the unlimited pilots, the latter would be given the bonus to their duration scores.

If this is an AMA sanctioned contest, then any deviations from the AMA contest rule book must be announced in detail as a part of all contest announcements and advertising.

[Bierlein]

This is an impromptu event.

On landings, I thought that anyone without a skeg, timing would stop when they landed and all the one without a skeg, time would stop when the plane stopped. This way the planes without a skeg could do somewhat of a touch and go if they wanted to try it.

Your handycap systems sounds good.

AL B

[Trroscoe]

Hey Al so they got you to be the contest CD for the December contest. You need to reserve last place for me. I will finally be able to fly in one of these things. I should get my new radio next week and plan to get the eclipse 7 like the one you have. Thanks for showing it to me. I am wi\orking on a deal to get me a two meter this weekend. I will be out flying on Saturday. Have fun and I think you will run a great contest.

Rick

[Ollie]

"On landings, I thought that anyone without a skeg, timing would stop when they landed and all the one without a skeg, time would stop when the plane stopped. This way the planes without a skeg could do somewhat of a touch and go if they wanted to try it."

Al,

What you are proposing here takes place upon landing but is really a variation in duration score as an option with an RES doing a touch and go.

What you need to do to level the playing field between RES and unlimited is to make it as easy for the RES contestants to score landing points as for the unlimited contestants to score landing points. One way to do this is to make the landing zone for RES larger than the landing zone for unlimited. Another way, if you are using a landing tape or measuring rod, is to multiply the RES tape or rod (raw) score by some factor greater than one. You could average all the RES raw scores and compare them to the average of all the unlimited landing scores to determine the factor to multiply the RES raw scores by to get the final RES scores.

[Bierlein]

I just took your advise and used the scores from the last contest where we ran res and unlimited classes and the difference between the two was 2479 points and there were 12 contestants in the res class and 13 in the unlimited so I devided 12 into the total and came up with a difference of 206 points.

Therefore I think that this would be a good way of hadicaping the two classes.

I also noticed that some people ran in both classes which I was not aware of. If I were aware of it, I would have entered my one res plane in both classes.

AL B

[Mr B....]

I enter both classes with a RES plane all the time. It has a lot to do with the pilot being able to land.

On the handycap make the landing 5 or 10 points in or out. It makes it a flying contest.

[Bierlein]

I have already decided that the points will be 1 point for each second of flight and 1 point for each inch of landing with a penalty of minus 10 points for each second past the maximum time.

[Bierlein]

I ran the open/res contest and used the suggested handicap.

I took the average of the res group and the aberage of the open group and then subtracted the smaller from the larger. As it turned out, the open group had 134 points on the average than the res group. Therefore I subtracted 134 points from each of the open group fliers.

The winner turned out to be a res flier by 31 points. Without the handicap, a res flier would have won by 14 points.

AL B

[Ollie]

Your contest results match my experience. In club contests, three channel polyhedral ships are competitive with fullhouse high tech, low dihedral ships. I think it takes exceptional flying skill to get the potentially higher performance that the $1000 moldies offer! By far, most fliers have a better match of their flying ability to an RES sailplane than to a low dihedral high tech model.

[Bierlein]

Correction:

Without the handicap, an open flier would have won the contest by 14 points.

AL B

[pocket rocket]

A Sailaire won over all the high and low tech planes.

Al's handicap seemed to produce a fair result.

Like all soaring contests you still have to find some lift and stay in it for a while to do well !!

Philip (4th place with a Fusion)

[Mr B....]

I just wanted to share this with every one. I won last month at SWSA in Covina CA with a RES to get my first LSF level 5 win. It was a great day to fly any plane but the best is that I was the top dog that day.

I was flying the NEW "Marauder" RES Class.