Another meaningless spat

From the The Oz Report:

Start before the first start time and your flight duration gets shifted to the first start time

As we have done in numerous US meets and again recently at the Bogong Cup, we allowed pilots to cross the start circle line first without additional penalty other than the shift of their flight forward to the first start time. We feel that this is penalty enough.

Sometimes this is hard to do, especially with GAP 2003 as this requires manual work on the part of the scorekeeper. One way we've gotten around this is to have the start window open a half hour after the launch window, but with no fifteen or twenty minute time intervals imposed until one hour after the first launch time.

Everyone is aware that going in the open start interval is a disadvantage, as pilots can use you to mark the thermals with no penalty to themselves. The point of doing this is to encourage pilots not to wait at launch on windy days (yesterday they still did for twenty minutes) and to let less experienced pilots go through the start circle without additional penalty if they just can't stay up in it.

One pilot seems to have found this rule particularly offensive and in conflict with his principals of fair play. He wants an additional penalty to further encourage ("force") all start at or before the first start time (of course the top pilots most often wait for the last start time). He doesn't want someone sneaking way out in front of everyone. He also feels that everyone should have the same opportunity to get every start time.

Well, we aren't flying today, so we might as well make each other miserable.