There was an extended discussion of the validity of the King
Mountain co-Nationals during the Competition Committee meeting. There were five
options:

1. Leave the validity at its original 7% as per the rules


2. Leave the validity at 100% as set by the Competition Committee Chairmen


3. Set the validity at 60% as determined by my calculation using open distance scoring (see earlier article)


4. Move the whole meet out of NTSS ranking altogether into open distance silo


5. Move it out of NTSS and keep it in also at some level of validity.

There was a polite but animated discussion about these various
option. Leo Bynum was particularly instrumental to forging a compromise (as was
Riss Estes). The compromise wasn't arbitrary. If you applied the Maryland East
Coast Championship GAP parameters  (instead of the Big Spring GAP
parameters) to the King Mountain meet it would have been 70% valid. Also the
average validity of the hang gliding meets over the last two years was
approximately 70%.

This allows for a fair validity for pilots who went to King and for those pilots
in the NTSS who went to other meets.