Last year I flew the British club class nats. They had changed their rule to setting the max start height 1000ft above cloudbase. This prevents any 'real' benefit from starting in wave but on most days where there was no wave noone had to worry about the start height and your full attention was put toward look out and not looking in at the altimeter.
That is my concern with a start height. A whole gaggle of gliders going round and round in the only thermal on the start line with brakes out, looking at their altimeters and not each other. I was happy when i moved here many moons ago that i had left start gate heights behind. I believe that whatever start rule is the simplest is the safest. The start gate has the highest risk of midair. Bad things happen when a pilots brain is overloaded. Anything that can be done to reduce workload at this time is safer. A start gate height and a speed limit do not do that. I really dont see the need to change from what we have. Solve one problem, create another. I like the JWGC idea. Jim Sent from Samsung Mobile Matthew Scutter <[email protected]> wrote: The JWGC organizers this year had a remarkably elegant solution to start heights that made me feel stupid for not having thought of it myself. If a maximum start height is set, it is simply required that pilots have a single fix BELOW the start height between the time of the start gate opening (usually ~20 minutes after last launch) until the time they actually cross the start line. So you can climb into wave as high as you like and start as high as you like, as long as you do it after the start gate has opened. If you're in the wave before the start gate opens, you have to come down and then climb up again like those who launched later. This means: 1) Everyone has a fair chance of getting into the wave / getting to cloudbase. 2) No VNE dives to get under the start line. -matthew On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Adam Woolley <[email protected]> wrote: Heard on the grape vine again... Max start height no more than 500ft below convection; and less than 150 kph groundspeed.. Thoughts? Discuss? WPP _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
_______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
