Draw a 40 kilometer cylinder around the start point, go any
direction, come back

Larry Bunner <<lbunner>>
writes:

The last two days of the 2018 Big Spring Nationals were quite
difficult to predict weather wise for me. Even Gary Osoba was reluctant to offer
his insights on the last day. I am still convinced that an out and return with a
large radius exit cylinder that allows pilots to fly the task in the direction
with the good weather would be the best answer on hard to predict days.

We wouldn’t have to change the task on the flight line as the weather conditions
changed. In addition, it offers a new element of decision making to the race to
goal format that is used all of the time in free flying. Unfortunately we
couldn’t test it out.

Some pilots think there would be too much luck involved in such a task, but I
think that is overreacting a bit. Sure there is an element of luck where a
“lesser” pilot could take a line that produces a result better than the top
pilots, but I think that would be an anomaly rather than the rule.

As you stated in the weekend's Oz Report there is luck involved already and this
system has been in place for the past 40+ years. It is time to shake things up a
bit and migrate toward tasks that reward individual decision making and less on
the ability to follow other pilots.

It’s too bad that Florida isn’t conducive to this type of task. I doubt if I
could convince the meet director to do this at SCFR but I’m gonna bring it up
there.