I'm curious about how Thermal Duration contests are organized and scored around the USA and around the world. Here are some questions to get things started, but please feel free to add anything else you can think of:

• Do you have pilot classes to separate skilled pilots from novices, or does everyone compete for the same awards under the same rules? If you have separate classes, what method is used to determine pilot classification?
• Do you have identical landing tasks for all types of gliders, or differences, such as dorking vs. sliding in, based upon the type of glider flown?
• Is your landing target a spot, and your landing scores based upon distance from the spot as measured by a tape, or is it a "runway" line with a means of measuring the distance from the line? Are you allowed to stand wherever you like while landing? What rules determine whether or not a landing is legal?
• Do you have mixed-launch events where winch-launched gliders complete against electric-powered gilders? If so, how do you maintain a "level playing field"? Are special restrictions placed upon the electric-powered ("EP") gliders? When does time start for the EP gliders? Are they required to climb out in the direction of the turnaround, or can they immediately head off in another direction? Do both do spot landings, scored by the same measuring tape?
• How does your scoring work? Are your contest scores normalized? Are they man-on-man? Are landing points added before normalization or after?
• Do you assign timers and/or launch order, or are your contests "open winch" where a pilot can launch whenever he and his timer are ready?

This is just a start. Please also mention the location of your contests and the organization in charge. Thanks!

SOAR club in Chicago:

Single class for club contests

Identical landing tasks, typically point/inch tape, stand wherever you like. Hit yourself, lose the landing, hit anyone else, lose the flight.

Mixed launch is allowed, 150M for winch-in-the-nose aircraft, must maintain winch direction during launch. Time starts on pilot-called motor shut-off.

Contests are MoM and normalized, landing is bonus (max score 1100 per round). Rounds flown in flight groups, seldom open-winch.

Timers are not assigned, grab your bud if you can, anyone else in a pinch.

Prescott Valley Silent Flyers in Arizona. Same rules as Chicago except usually 1 point per second to the max and -1 per second over. Rick

+1 of SOAR, but we seed the rounds after the first round.

Marc

We fly seeded man on man, FAI landing tapes, scores with landing points normalized max
score 1000

Doug

We are the Albuquerque Soaring Association, based in (wait for it!) -- Albuquerque, New Mexico. New Mexico is that Federally-designated region set aside to prevent lost and confused Texans from bothering people in Arizona.

The club has a long history, and has included in its member ship such modelling luminaries as Buzz Averill and Dave Thornberg. We have had flying privileges at a sod farm East of town for at least thirty years, so we have been in operation since at least 1978. Our true origins have been lost to history, perhaps for the better. We fly a wide variety of classes and venues, and typically follow along with whatever is currently popular. For the moment, that's F5J. So, on to the questions.

1. We do not bother with separate classes. In our club, we figure the alternative to running with the big dogs is to sleep under the porch. In our favor, we actively drag beginners out, and shepherd them through the exercises.

2. Landing tasks are set by the rules of the contest being flown: F5J, F3RES, F3K, and our home-grown Hiss-n-Boink.

3. Landing targets are per the rules of the game. For Hiss-n-Boink (hereafter referred to as HnB), the target is a 20-foot rope, stretched out parallel to the wind. The airplane must slide to a graceful stop ("Hiss", for the sound it makes sliding on the, well, hopefully grass, but whatever). Points are measured with a 100-inch tape, the shortest distance from the rope to the nose of the airplane, with 100 points possible. Any other landing is a "boink", and counts zero. Sometimes, we do a variation on spot landings with DLGs. We throw the airplane javelin style, and get one point for 20 seconds in the air, two more points for 40 seconds in the air, and two more points for landing on some one's hat tossed on the ground, for 5 total points.

4. No mixed-launch events. There aren't enough of us to justify it. We do conduct real, open-class contests, and routinely go head-to-head with F3J ships meeting F3RES, Gentle Ladies and so forth. In F5J or ALES, we compete both "real" F5J with powered F3RES and even Radians. Our motto: "show us what you got".

5. Scoring is based on the rules of the game being played, whether F5J, F3K or whatever. We use Gliderscore, so we can accommodate most anything, but usually just manually compute scores. HnB is so simple, its easier to write it down. There are no rounds in HnB; flying is continuous once it starts and you just get your score. We pay-to-play HnB, usually a dollar, and first place gets the money.

6. Timers get assigned or volunteer per the rules of the game being played. Since our club has a long history of tolerance and inclusion, timing for one another is a matter of course, and timing duties specifically include assisting the pilot to make the BEST FLIGHT POSSIBLE. Among club members, the goal is fun with learning. When we go to sanctioned contests, that's another story.

Hope this helps.

The Pikes Peak Soaring Society (PPSS) has been in existence for 40 years in Colorado Springs and have about 50 members half of whom are active. We also fly sport electrics at a soccer field during the week. We fly a contest every month counting the best five for season standings. We do not sanction our contests. We have three classes, Novice, Sportsman and Open. Mixed launch is permitted in every contest and seems to work well. The club long ago determined that we wouldn't pursue hard core competition and so our motto is "Relaxed Soaring in the Rockies".

We fly open winch with a retriever and with typically 10-12 contestants the rounds go very quickly. We usually fly four to five rounds with runway landings. We haven't flown man-on-man in decades. No F5J, F3K or ALES events but we do fly a night contest, an electric launched event and a Woody Fly-In all for no season points. PPSS also flys a Colorado Challenge Cup with RMSA, our sister club in Denver where we always lose but enjoy it anyway. F3-RES seems to interest our membership currently.

Comments:

The club has always flown separate classes with a focus on assuring success for the beginner and graduating them to advanced classes.

Scoring is usually done manually although we do have on-field computer scoring where it is advantageous.

Electric launch limited to 150 meters and must launch in same direction as the winch line. The launch may go out as far as desired but no significant deviation until the turnaround is reached. Time starts when motor shuts off.

Typically landings have been runway but we do spot occasionally. We just recently regained the use of our sod farm so this may effect our landing choices.

No assigned timers.

PPSS in Colorado Springs generally follows AMA rules including the safety regulations.

Thanks for all of the responses so far! I'm reading them all and hoping to get a lot more.

Mike, quick question, how has the two tier landing tapes for your contests this being accepted?

Marc

I'm not sure yet. It seemed to me that at the contest most of us tried to avoid the subject, follow the CD's rules, and have a good time.

That is how to fly a contest, do what the CD says!

Marc

I may have missed it, but I didn't see any comments about launching together. In the Eastern Soaring League, we'll have 4 winches and a back up. A group of 4 pilots will be called up. When they're ready, the winch master will tell one of them to launch, usually from the downwind end of the line of pilots. As soon as that line gets pulled down, the next pilot is sent up, and so on. If anyone pops off, and the rules allow a re-flight after a pop off, they can go up on the back up winch after the other pilots are launched, but that one has a retriever line and so won't launch quite as high. There's someone out by the turnarounds to fix problems and to signal the winch master to stop pulling the line down. As soon as everyone is launched, the person at the turnarounds attaches the 4 winch lines to the back of a golf cart that has special hooks on the back, and a driver brings the cart back to the winch master. The hooks are set up with springs to let go if the line gets snagged, so it won't break. At CRRC, John Nilsson, one of our more enterprising members, developed a cart which is pulled back and forth by two MORE winches, though the one pulling the cart back to the turnarounds is adjustable and is set not to pull as hard as the usual winch. The 4 winch lines add enough drag when it's going the other way.

A lot of work is needed to keep an ESL contest running, but most of that work comes from the pilots. In our club we usually have one or two people handling the scoring who aren't in the contest, not usually pilots themselves.

I've been to contests in the recent past where retriever lines were used on each winch, but I don't recall if any were actually ESL contests.

I'd say attend an ESL contest to find out more, but the southernmost ESL contest is still 12 hours drive north of Miami.

In my club we mostly arrange competitions in F5J and fly it according to the FAI-rules with the exception that motor emergency restarts are allowed (but gives zero flight points).

During a club meeting during the winter season we discuss how many competitions we will have during the summer season, and ask who is willing to arrange each competition. We have no pool of helpers available so we try to arrange a competition with as little workload from the contest director as possible, thus allowing the CD to participate himself.

One of the keys to minimize labour is to use GliderScore to do the randomizing of the rounds and groups. We also print out small score-sheets to all pilots, one for each round. The pilot is responsible to give the score-sheet for the round to the timekeeper and -- after the score is recorded -- to write down the score in a "global" score-sheet, and to put his score-sheet in a box at the secretariat (a camping table out of the way from the flight line).

During a competition we don't allowing any teaming, all participants are treated as individuals. We have never been so many participants to need more than two groups (usually we are 6-12 pilots) and we have a local rule saying that the pilots assigned to the same lane in the round are timekeeper to each other. As two pilots rarely are assigned to the same lane in several rounds, each pilot will have several different timekeepers during the competition. That way any newcomer gets the same access to experienced reader/timekeeper as the top pilot and personally I feel it's a great way spread knowledge between the participants. I learn so much more during a competition than during several days of training by myself just by having some of the best pilots as readers/timekeepers.

Throughout the competition day we have a mp3-player with a single mp3-file on an endless loop. The mp3-file is (sort of) a 10-minute countdown for the flight, followed by a 8-minute silence. It's up to each pilot to be ready for the next flight in those eight minutes, the clock (mp3-player) isn't stopped just because someone isn't ready (unless some extraordinary event has occurred). We have found that gives us better "flow" during the competition day. The eight minute pause has been determined by experimentation to be suitable. A pilot has enough time to get to the depot to get his plane and switch battery during the pause, but we don't loose unnecessary time just waiting for the clock to count down.

The scores aren't calculated until all rounds are flown. It's not until then the CD has to care about them. He then grabs someone to help him read and double-check the scores recorded during the day and to put them into Gliderscore. This is to keep the workload down for the CD so he can be a pilot during the competition, because we probably would have problem getting someone to run a contest if he has to refrain from flying himself.

SBS_Pilot, lots of great ideas there. Thanks!

Mike,

These are a lot of great ideas!

One question I would ask is whether they participate in a soaring 'conference' with multiple clubs and yearly awards. Club contests are fine and anything that fosters participation and fun is excellent. But its different trying to keep everyone happy and scoring somehow consistent over 14 or 15 contest in a year among 3 or 4 clubs.

I'd be interested in hearing discussion and ideas about how this is (or might be) approached.

Rick