FIA ruling on reflights

[mark_r]

15 minutes ago, Les said:

Cheers Peter

I hope it dose not effect the result because you really deserve this win .

It's a matter to be cleared up for the next comps.

It would be an extreme reaction to invalidate a comp for interpretation of an ambiguous rule! It just needs clarification and moving on.

[Les]

19 minutes ago, mark_r said:

It would be an extreme reaction to invalidate a comp for interpretation of an ambiguous rule! It just needs clarification and moving on.

I'm with you on this one. 

 

[oipigface]

Me too. Nonetheless, I think the question had to be asked. Personally, I don’t think the rule is at all ambiguous, and quite where the new interpretation came from, I don’t know.

For me, the only part that really needs clarification is the word ‘constantly’ in the clause about the wind direction. Why does the rule differ between wind speed and direction?

[prondel]

2 hours ago, mark_r said:

It would be an extreme reaction to invalidate a comp for interpretation of an ambiguous rule! It just needs clarification and moving on.

full agreement with you Mark !

[isoaritfirst]

It seems perfectly clear to me,

The CD interrupts the flight, at the point where the conditions  meet the criteria for a reflight.

That may be the just before passing the last base, but by definition should not be after,. Although CD's cannot be expected to react this quickly so occasions may arise when the decision is after the flight has finished..

Once interrupted the pilot is entitled to a reflight. He is not ordered to, or even  has to take the reflight, any flight is the pilots choice. He does not have the option to score from a flight that doesn't meet the competition criteria.

So for me the wording is unambiguous and correct, at least as regards wind speed.

 

The 45 degree criteria is  however unclear.

Constantly Deviates, ??

Deviates, we know means more than 45degrees.

Constantly is defined in the dictionary as  "continuously over a period of time."

 

It is unclear if the intention was,

Constantly more than 45, or

constantly moving in and out of 45,

and no mention of the "Constantly" period of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mark_r]

Mike, I guess your interpretation illustrates the ambiguity. The wording refers to interrupting the contest (not the flight), and also, many international comps have cd's who are separate to the guys operating the timing gear. I've always felt that explanatory notes attached to the rules, would be helpful to understand the reasoning behind the rule.

 

The word 'constantly' used to have clarification within the rules as meaning a 20s period - guess I'll dig the rules out and see if it has been removed.

We need a gbsra person to come back with a clarification on the reflight ruling otherwise we could fill a few more pages of this thread

[Andy_B]

Mike, your explanation is also ambiguous , if the CD interrupts the flight  thats it reflight there is no choice if you cant score from a flight outside of the contest criteria .

Personally if you cant have a flight in thermic air that counts then the competition has lost some of its appeal.

as we talked about before ,it might aswell be done on a flight simulator

[Rumbey]

The wind direction ruling needs to be clarified. According to a pilot watching my flight and the wind direction meter, the wind direction went beyond 45 degrees for a few seconds only.  I had to have a re flight which is ridiculous!

[isoaritfirst]

2 hours ago, Andy_B said:

Mike, your explanation is also ambiguous , if the CD interrupts the flight  thats it reflight there is no choice if you cant score from a flight outside of the contest criteria .

Personally if you cant have a flight in thermic air that counts then the competition has lost some of its appeal.

as we talked about before ,it might aswell be done on a flight simulator

The point Andy is that the wording is correct. The pilot is entitled to a reflight. 

If he chooses not to take it, he would get a zero. The CD cannot insist that he flies. 

Mark - Interrupting the flight That has non conforming conditions will also interrupt the contest. Wording as contest perhaps portrays that the contest is interrupted not just for that flight but until conditions stabilise. 

Whether I agree with these rules or not, I am still undecided.  Just trying to make sense of where we are . 

 

[isoaritfirst]

Agree Dave, constantly deviating is not a glitch out of direction. 

I suspect it should be covered by the 20sec period. But it needs clarification 

[Nigel_W]

I agree the 3 weather-related elements of this rule are poorly worded (the rain one is the worst, with no definitions at all).  They are technically nearly impossible for CDs to apply consistently in changeable or marginal conditions, especially when loss of whole rounds or group scoring is at risk.  In poor conditions (light winds, or rain showers)  it is sometimes a small difference between a failed comp and 4 successful rounds.  But it is difficult to write a rule that allows CDs to "sometimes ignore" out-of-limit conditions.

We already have too many entrants dropping out on "light wind" or "occasional rain" days as not enjoyable enough, and the more rigid interpretation will worsen that.  So as others have suggested, perhaps we should ask the BMFA (SFTC?) to approve a local variation to the rule as below, which would take some of the pressure off precise rule interpretations and CD spot decisions.

"If these conditions arise during the flight the contest director must interrupt the Round and the competitor may elect to either complete the flight, or to claim a reflight."

(I think the word Round should have been used here, not Contest, because the rest of this section 5.8.17 refers to the Round).

[oipigface]

6 hours ago, Witch_1 said:

... it is difficult to write a rule that allows CDs to "sometimes ignore" out-of-limit conditions.

 

"If these conditions arise during the flight the contest director must interrupt the Round and the competitor may elect to either complete the flight, or to claim a reflight.”

Well, it isn’t really difficult. Just change the word ‘must’ to ‘may’ in your proposed wording, and the job’s done. (This remark is not intended to suggest either that I approve of you proposal, or of the proposal as I suggest it might be reworded.)

The problem we are wrestling with here is a complex one because i) weather conditions are inherently complex. (In particular, local knowledge is often of importance in our assessment of them); ii) the available practical methods for measuring the relevant aspects of them (i.e. wind speed, wind direction and ‘rain’) are rather crude, and also differ from site to site.

Given this,  I think it is actually impossible to write a set of rules that will suit for all eventualities, without allowing some discretion in their application on a particular day, at a particular time and place. If we want this discretion to be available to the CD, we can write the rules using weasel words  such as ‘normally’ and ‘may’. These allow some flexibility for CD’s to react in a helpful way when the rules seem to be giving poor outcomes.  Having said this, I think a lot of the required flexibility is provided by giving the power to choose to the contestant, and  I would prefer that the CD’s role be limited to choosing (with the help of the available measurements) when it is appropriate to offer this power to the contestant. After all, the contestant has access to better information about the quality of the air during his flight than anyone else, including the CD.

How about: ‘If, having checked the relevant measuring devices, the CD judges that these conditions arise during a flight, the competitor may elect to claim a reflight. ‘ I don’t think the stuff about interrupting the round or contest adds much at all.

The referee’s job is never easy.

 

 

[isoaritfirst]

In my opinion, we should be careful what we wish for. 

F3f is a simple, open to all successful slope comp. it attracts and retains competitors. 

Not many other comps do. 

I’m sure we could all think of reasons why that is the case. 

So why do we wish to try to constrict it?

Many comps are part of a competition series, such that variabilities get lessened  by numbers of rounds and number of comps flown. The end result is usually well deserved  

There may be a need for single event comps such as the W/c to have tighter ruling, but for the rest, lets keep the sport simple and attractive to all .

The role of the dice adds not detracts from our sport. 

 

 

 

[oipigface]

2 hours ago, isoaritfirst said:

So why do we wish to try to constrict it?

Mike, I don’t get the impression from any of the contributions so far that anyone is suggesting tightening the rules. This discussion arose from a misinterpretation of a rule, that had the effect of tightening it. The rule is not perfect, for reasons that I tried to untangle in my last post, but in my view the idea that it gave power to the CD to force a contestant to refly is not one of its imperfections. It is unambiguous in that respect, in my opinion.  The inadequate specification of what is meant by ‘constantly’ and ‘rain’, are two issues that we’ve discussed here, and I think we are reaching a consensus about the need to amend these parts of the rule. 

No one has yet raised the question of the difficulty of measuring wind direction, and I am certainly not going to!

[tonydoc]

Hi , hands up who had heard of the rule change before Dave Rumbie's reflight during a good run on the first day..on the look of Dave's face not him.

I think the first consideration should be public /model safety after that return to the old accepted rule of reflight if the conditions or pilot accepts the offer.

[tonym]

Is the rule intended to ensure that a pilot doesn't have to fly a round in poor conditions? It is unlikely to be intended that a good flight is to be penalised because a thermal changed the speed and direction of the wind on the slope. A strong thermal could affect the measuring devices for more than the set time for measurements.

It would be an odd CD that would interpret a good flight as having been in poor conditions and a re-flight was mandatory!

Tony - sometime F3K & F5J CD

[SilentPilot]

11 hours ago, tonym said:

It would be an odd CD that would interpret a good flight as having been in poor conditions and a re-flight was mandatory!

I bet Dave thought he got an odd CD. That’s pretty much what seemed to happen to him!

 

Tony - really poor WL F3F entrant! 

[oipigface]

11 hours ago, tonym said:

Is the rule intended to ensure that a pilot doesn't have to fly a round in poor conditions? It is unlikely to be intended that a good flight is to be penalised because a thermal changed the speed and direction of the wind on the slope. A strong thermal could affect the measuring devices for more than the set time for measurements.

It would be an odd CD that would interpret a good flight as having been in poor conditions and a re-flight was mandatory!

Tony - sometime F3K & F5J CD

I don’t think the rule is there to help pilots so much as to help CD’s. The rules specify the layout of the course, and in F3F an important aspect of course layout is its orientation to the wind. The rules also specify that the wind strength be at least 3m/s. These two rules are intended to ensure that the pilot has a minimal amount of lift to fly. On many occasions, the wind blows and stays more or less at right angles to the course. Temporary deviations of  direction are not necessarily a bad thing: one skill experienced F3F pilots acquire is the ability to vary the shape of their run to take best advantage of a crossed wind. But excessive deviation (defined in the rules as +/-45 degrees) can make it impossible to continue flying for long, as does very light wind strength.

So what should a CD do if wind strength drop below the minimum, or away from the normal? The rules as they are exist are helpful, but perhaps not helpful enough. The CD firstly needs to know whether the conditions are illegal. Measuring devices are helpful here, but they are flawed. The siting of the anemometer can determine what wind strength it shows, and ‘wind direction’ can be hard to define, let alone measure in what is often a turbulent ambience. (What is the ‘wind direction’ on a bowl?) We use these devices partly because the rules say we should, but also to give the CD and the contestants some guidance (and the CD protection if a decision is contested). This is all well known, and we have learned to live with the occasional day when the contest seems to be disrupted by multiple reflights, and in the event that the lift seems permanently to have deserted us.

What put the cat among the pigeons at La Mu and HoH is the claim that the rule had changed in such a way as to strip pilots of their power to choose to retain a score when the flight had been flown in conditions that the CD judged to be illegal. In a previous post in this thread Pierre has documented recent rule changes and there is no evidence from his post that any such rule change took place. Whichever  way the rule is interpreted the CD has no choice (within the rules) to do anything other than offer a reflight (mandatory or not) when the instrumentation indicates illegal conditions. 

In brief, the CD’s oddness in imposing a reflight following a good time was believed to be imposed on the CD by the rule, which it turns out was never a rule, nor, I hope will ever become one.

[oipigface]

26 minutes ago, SilentPilot said:

really poor WL F3F entrant! 

Stick with it, Tony, it will get better!

[tonym]

Thanks John ( @oipigface ) for the reply.

Common sense is a thing that is becoming more rare and rules are needed for any and all situations that might arise - and for situations that might arise in those situations
Maybe some clarifying words about thermic conditions need to be added, and rain, should some get suggested to the CIAM.