1) Background
Mark Dowsett March, 2008:
The number of sanctioned competitions in general seem to be on the decline...yet those few events we have seem to have great demand to enter. Events with a limited size are 'selling out'/filling up at a great pace.
Why is this? When I learned to fly, there were sanctioned local competitions every long weekend (and some on regular weekends). They were small events with somewhat small tasks and maybe a dozen entrants but they taught me so much about flying efficiently and introduced me to cross-country flying when I was ready to do so.
'Competitions', always meant to me a venue that allow a group to set a task to achieve together....and usually on days where you wouldn't think it was possible or wouldn't try. And it always meant I could learn to fly better from those that flew better than me - this still holds today and is why I go to competitions.
It used to be a lot simpler to hold a competition...there was no formal scoring system, no GPSs...just a bunch of your friends figuring out where to fly that day and sorting out who got there first. The introduction to GPSs changed a lot on the high-end events - it made scoring more accurate and less hassle for competitors. BUT, it made it way more technical for pilots to figure out their new instrument and more technical for scorers (scoring systems).
Scoring systems (the RACE/GAP scoring system) got a lot more complex and still to this day, most competitors don't understand it fully (me included)...it all seems a mystery on how daily results come out. GAP's goal is to reward consistency which is integral to World Rankings.
So now with the complexity and high demands on organizers to do all the technical requirements, Randy Parkin and I (two of the biggest 'modern-day' meet organizers in Canada) feel that Meet Organizers have been scared off...almost into extinction.
I am personally not interested in OLC scored events since it doesn't engage the pilot to:
- make any sort of pre-flight-planning
- encourage them to work with other pilots to achieve XC goals
- integrate them into racing meets
* all you do is fly and then see what the OLC optimization gives you....it's great/easy for scoring a meet but it all seems a mystery. And flat-triangles are a bogus bonus - it does nothing to encourage the pilot to do real (FAI) triangles.
The result is almost NO sanctioned competitions (of any size) in Canada...MAYBE a National event if we're lucky. This means if you're starting out in our sport, there is no domestic venue to learn to improve your XC flying or to compete.
Could this be tied into or
Could this be tied into or made in some way similar to the BC XC League?
I'm sure that most of you will have had a chance to check out the format for that. One of the things that we've tried introducing there with some degree of success is that everyone has a chance to win something if they enter. Basically the more days you fly XC the better your odds of winning a participant prize.
Are there any other ideas for inspiring pilots to enter rather than to sit on the side-lines?
The BC XC league is one way
The BC XC league is one way to get people out. We're proposing another. Mark and I are agreed everyone (at least in the target groups) should have a reasonable chance to win. They should also have a chance to develop the skills required for bigger, racing meets, hence the task options that favour TP's and encourage speed, while not being full on races.
You need four things for a
You need four things for a good flying competition: sites, weather, pilots and organizers. We have sites, and you can't do anything about the weather, so two down. We need more pilots pilots competing, and I think they'll show up for the right comp. You can't get those until you have organizers.
Why don't more organizers volunteer to run comps? As Mark said above, the technical aspects of scoring are a big reason. I think it goes further, that it is just too intimidating for a new organizer, especially when the request is for someone to run the Nationals. We need to make it easier for organizers to step up. If we do, I believe we'll get more pilots competing. And that will both enhance our overall competitive pool and bring money and attention to the great flying sites we have across the country.
I think that part of the
I think that part of the problem with getting comps organized is that they've become more and more "Go Big or Go Home" style events. This is not only in the macho type of flying that seems to be encouraged by some, but more so in the demands placed on organizers. I'd organize a comp myself (just to prove that I could) but in order to do it to a standard that I'd be happy with I'd have to take off several weeks from work and wrangle an army of people to help out. In other words this is not going to happen this year or anytime soon, eventhough I have already got a location/area picked out.
Basically what it comes down to is that a lot of people have lives outside of flying. It's hard for people to juggle their personal schedules with the flying season. It is almost easier to get pilots out for a Monday to Friday comp than on a random weekend in the summer, since it might be easier to get a week of vacation days at work than to get out of various family and social obligations. If trying to follow a comp circuit is hard to do as a recreational pilot it is even more so for an organizer who can spend 2 or 3 times as much time on it.
This lends itself to the situation that I've seen now going to a couple of the US comps. The majority of the pilots are "paragliding bums" and you see the same group at every comp. These are people who sell gear, fly tandems and teach pargliding when they are not competing. There are very few happily married socially well balanced wage earners in the bunch. The Haley's (Rat RAce organizers) fit right in with this since the whole family seems to be flying nuts and nobody seems to have a real job (Mike's retired).
We'll probably talk more about it , but basically what the objective in creating a new competion format becomes is to get new people into it other than the "paragliding bums" (PBs). The thing is that you have to figure out what is going to excite these people.
Getting on track again, I don't see anything wrong with the OLC scoring experiment. Basically it was an attempt to fill in the gap between the ultra technical GAP/RACE scoring system and old style tack on a map scoring. That's all nobody said it was perfect. Anything that reduces that technical overhead can be condsidered, since its one of the deterents to the "non-paragliding bums" (non-PBs).
You're on the same page we
You're on the same page we are, Rob. The whole intent of this "series" is to get at two groups...
- those people like yourself who could organize and haven't because of the time and energy required. We want to offer a format and support that makes it easy to run something that is fun and competitive. Get these people in, let them have some success, and maybe some of them will mature into wanting to try a "big" comp.
- those pilots who do not go to the "big" comps, both newbies starting out and "weekend warriors" who like competing but are put off by the "elite" nature of the comps run now.
We hope people will travel to compete in the series, but that isn't required. The series just adds interest and focus that makes the weekends more fun.
more comps...
I'd like to host something for the prairies but I have to learn the scoring system. I could go about it by doing research online or I could find Mark or you Randy to figure out how to do it.
I think the comp would be tiny. Maybe 5 guys. And if the conditions sucked, we might have a bunch of 5km minimum scores.
I really don't know how to do it otherwise. And no one is committed around here to take a week off to fly so it would have to be a very small comp. You see the dilemma I face here in Manitoba.
It'd just be a very poor comp. I wouldn't know what to think of it after.
Your comments please.
quinn