Below you can find an email with general considerations and accommodating rules changes to improve safety and sporting competitiveness.
Dear All,
Thank you for your comments. I find the discussion forwarded by Frouwke very interesting for several reasons, and I believe I understand the various points of view.
First of all, in gliding I generally prefer simple AST tasks. They are, in my opinion, the most competitive and the fairest. They allow for quick comparison of performance, make progress easy to track, and provide a very steep learning curve for younger pilots. There are many advantages. I am not a great fan of AAT, as there is often a significant "luck factor" involved. You have several options, but you never really know which will give you the best score. It is quite common to miscalculate and arrive before minimum time — which is extremely frustrating and demotivating.
The same applies to the start cylinder. Initially, when I had to actually use it in flight, I disliked my own idea. It can be unfair in specific weather conditions or simply when you are unlucky — but exactly the same can happen with a classic AST task if you start at the wrong moment. Very often those who lead for most of the day are overtaken by a gaggle or by pilots who were far behind. We cannot eliminate the element of bad luck in gliding.
If the only goal was the sporting aspect, I would not consider any changes. AST works best — and of course, the task setter plays a crucial role. Interestingly, regardless of the rules we create, the best pilots usually win, don't they?
My only motivation to look for new solutions is to reduce collision risk. Intuitively, I feel that 50–80% of collisions are the result of pure bad luck or of pilots simply not seeing each other in time. This risk can be reduced only by lowering the probability of pilots "meeting" in the air. Put simply: pilots are a threat to one another. Someone might say that it is not real competition if we don't see each other in the air. That may be true, but if someone enjoys chasing or being chased, they can fly Grand Prix, where the number of pilots is lower and the gaggle risk is broadly accepted.
My ideas formed and developed only after I returned from competitions where someone had been killed or where a serious near miss occurred. I remember one FCC event where we had an out-and-return leg, and about 30 gliders were passing each other head-on at high speeds. After that, I discussed the situation with Wolfgang, and the concept of a start cylinder with altitude separation emerged. Interestingly, many pilots saw nothing dangerous in that scenario — it was considered a "normal" task situation.
Should we listen to pilots or not? I fully understand Brian's concerns, but in my opinion competition flying ultimately exists for the pilots. Not for spectators, not for the IGC, not for delegates. It is the pilots who sit in the gliders, and we (IGC) must give them rules that are safe — safety has to be the first priority. It is obvious we will never satisfy everyone; that is simply impossible. Some pilots will not understand why we are making changes. The only way forward is to involve as many pilots as possible in the discussion — then it is much easier to introduce something new once some of them are already convinced.
I am a big fan of surveys, and I believe they work very well. Pilots usually do not enjoy theoretical debates, but if you present real cases and strong arguments, they will listen and cooperate. The sporting aspect is important, but gliding has never been fully fair from the very beginning. In my view, it is impossible to introduce a new option without adding some complexity to the rules or sacrificing part of the sporting aspect. It has to be done very carefully, and for that we need pilots' input — as much as we can get. Someone who is not an active competition pilot will never fully understand or predict all the consequences, even if something looks perfect in theory. We have had many examples of this in the past.
The 2018 proposal was a revolution. I am in favor of evolution — relatively small, incremental changes. Such changes must be thoroughly tested before being introduced into Annex A. We have plenty of competitions worldwide, so this should not be a problem — although finding an organizer willing to test new concepts is often the most difficult part, and sometimes impossible, as we have already seen.
Thank you for reading.
Karol