38 58 10.92 N,75 52 0.00 W,Highland Aerosports, Ridgely,
Maryland, USA

Hang gliding (and paragliding) scoring is a mess. It is a mix of
distance and time points as well as a variety of other points that have various
explanations for their inclusion. Those explanations are often at odds with the
underlining equations and algorithms that actually implement them.

Most pilots just ignore all this and just fly the competition and attempt to do
their best. A few pilots, including some top scoring pilots attempt to
understand (or think that they do understand) the scoring systems so that they
can maximize their scoring.

Our competition format is "Race to Goal." So why don't we just score the
competition so that the pilot who gets to goal first wins the day? If you don't
get to goal, well, too bad, you just don't get any points. This is a race to
goal after all. This would in fact be real points.

So why distance and time? In hang gliding and paragliding it is often the case
that pilots don't make it to goal. In fact most of the time most of the pilots
don't make it to goal. One of the reasons is that the goals are often set at a
distance that makes it difficult to get to. Only the most skilled pilots are
able to make it to the goal. With a wide spectrum of skills represented among
the pilots it is difficult to call a task that actually makes it a race to a
goal. Meet directors (and pilots) feel that the task should be difficult to
accomplish and long enough to represent a real challenge to all the pilots,
including the best pilots.

Therefore, points are split between the pilots who do make it to goal, they get
distance and time points, and pilots who don't make goal, they just get distance
points. The arbitrary formulas (created to replicate "good looking" curves) that
determine this split, and determine the distribution of time points and distance
points weigh toward more time points as more pilots make goal.

Of course, task committees can misunderstand what is a makeable goal and
conditions can be such (or change to be such) that no pilots can make goal. You
don't necessarily wish to throw out a day just because no one can make it to the
goal.

So time and distance are at least measureable for each pilot and they are real
enough. Maybe the points awarded for your distance and time are arbitrarily
distributed, but you do know your actual speed and distance.

If you are going to have a race to goal, perhaps you should all start the race
at the same time. It doesn't make much sense to start later. In paragliding
competitions race starts (everyone starting at the same time) are the rule. With
hill launches everyone has the opportunity to get off the hill and up in the
start cylinder, so that they can all start together.

Hang glider competitions, whether aerotowed or hill launch, most often have
multiple start gates. Pilots can start later than other pilots. It's like they
are in two or three or four different races. Multiple start times are used
because meet organizers can't be sure that they can get all pilots off and up in
the start cylinder in time for a single start time. Of course, if they extended
the time between the launch window open and the start gate time this would at
least be possible, if not guaranteed. But, the trade off is that the first
pilots to launch have to spend a lot of time in the air waiting for the start
gate.

So, wait a minute, we are talking about devaluing our race to goal, just for the
convenience of pilots. Just because we don't want them to over exert themselves
waiting for a start gate. This came about when pilots weren't forced to launch
(an ordered launch with an implied push) right when the launch window opened,
and we used the promise of multiple start times (and a shorter time between the
launch open and the first start time) to encourage pilots to get going.

With multiple start gates we run into the problem of one race interfering with
another race. The pilots that take a later start gate sometimes have the
opportunity to use the pilots who have taken an earlier start gate to mark the
thermals for the following pilots, thereby allowing them to fly faster than they
would have otherwise. This seems so unfair and an active discouragement to those
pilots who took the earlier start time. Our race to goal is now getting very
confusing.

So "leading points" and "arrival position points" (or their equivalent) are
included in our scoring system, and they are meant to reward pilots who get out
in front and get to goal early. They are meant to offset the advantage that the
pilots behind them may have if they use the earlier pilots as thermal markers.

These "funny" points also encourage pilots to launch earlier (when there wasn't
a forced launch) which helped the meet organizers get the task going.

So how are "leading points" calculated? The documentation for the FS scoring
program (the "official scoring program") is found here:
http://www.fai.org/downloads/civl/SC7_GAP on page 33. Leading points are
calculated using the area under the pilot's flight curve. They are more
accurately labeled as "flight curve area" points.

Top pilots (well, Jonny Durand, Dustin Martin, and Zac Majors) have advocated to
me to be sure to use a scoring system that uses these "leading points or "flight
curve area" points because they contend that they reward pilots who pull the
leading gaggle. What does the FS documentation say about this?

The documentation states:

Flying "in" the leading group (perhaps because they left at the
first start time).

The documentation does not say that the "flight curve area" points reward a
pilot who pulls the leading gaggle. It is difficult for me after reading the
documentation to make that determination. Perhaps you can. These pilots contend
that they have seen that result. They have not provided me with any
documentation of that claim.

On the first day of the 2015 ECC, four pilots made it to goal early. We received
"leading points" and "arrival position points" but we did not earn those points
by providing thermal markers for the pilots who arrived much later behind us. We
received unearned extra points just as an artifact of the scoring system that
did not count us correctly.

Jonny, Dustin, and Zac want a scoring system that rewards the pilots who go out
in front of the lead gaggle (why just the lead gaggle?) and pull it (take the
risks to find the next thermal). I contend that we don't have that yet (or at
least that the documentation doesn't state that we have that).

I contend that with multiple start gates we are trapped into a multiple race
system that is a compromise with the actual race and requires these kludges to
make it "work."

I have written about this before. You can review my long series of articles that
illustrate the GAP 2014 (GAP 2002) formulas starting here:
http://ozreport.com/17.028#0.

More on "real leading points" in the next issue.