SEN 2209
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- Category: Archive Jan-Nov 2016
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Table of Contents - SEN 2208
- Team Selection process
- More crazy thoughts adding to John's
- SEN Rules and Geo Politics
- Europe - A Scottish Perspective
- European Defintion
- What could go wrong ...
- What's the big deal ..
- Finals with Capped Flyoffs
Team Selection process
From: John Clapp
I seldom weigh in on these "contests", but as I see it we have a very good,
high quality, experienced F1B team:
A. Alex is many times World Champ.
B. Charlie has been on other F1B teams and one of the last times he was
up very high and thought that he might possibly win the whole thing only to
spill over the thermal edge and quickly descend.
C. Blake is a several times F1B team member and does extremely well in
any contest that he enters.
i.e. The process has yielded a very high quality F1B team, and it looks like
the same is true for A ,and C.
The problem is that many good fliers feel that it is very difficult, to
impossible, to break into the elite sportsmen's typical performance level.
Yes, occasionally it has haphttp://www.faifreeflight.org/phplist/admin/?page=send&id=1448&tab=Contentpened, but not in decent numbers.
I don't have the answer, but it would be nice if there were some sort of
program that would allow the three next highest modelers in each category to
be in a lower level world event during the "off" year.
I realize that this is "idealist", and added cost, but we need to offer
something for the next level of competitors. ( Perhaps a PAN AM champs)
My thoughts,
John
More crazy thoughts adding to John's
From: The Editor
What's the objective : to promote top level FAI Free Flight World Wide - not just Europe
So far this has been done successfully by permitting countries outside of Europe to have 3 World Cup events.
It is also helped by having several World Cup Weeks or Weekends thus optomising travel.
This is added by the practice of people hosting another nation's otherwise unused World Cup event. A practice that some purists may not approved of but has
given rise to very important an successful events such as the Fab Feb Week at Lost Hills and the Nordic countries events in Sweden in the summer. This practice clearly
aide sportsmen whith limited budgets and high travel costs.
However while important the World Cups events are not Category 1 events and the particpants are "only" representing them sleves not their country as well
Country Level. Encourage non-European country's to work together on Continental Championships. For example the Mongolian's changing their Asian Continental Championship to and Asian and Oceanic Continental Championship increased the number potential participants.
At the FAI Level permit NAC's to enter a second Team in a Continental Championship if (for example) there are less than 25 countries entered.
Why ? it make it a bigger event and gives more people the opportunity to fly in a category 1 event.
NAC cost concerns. The average NAC , for example the AMA in the USA always has cost concerns for this kind of event. This is at two levels one is as a an organizer and the other is supporting or not the Team.
By permitting the participation of "B" teams there will be increased entry fees that will help cover part of the fixed cost.
In most cases the financial aid given to the National teams is not very high at all and there could be a clear understanding that Continental Champ team including the "B" team needs to be self funded.
SEN Rules and Geo Politics
We have a SEN editorial rule that excludes political articles and statements. With some of the recent discussion particularity around Brexit we are coming close to the edge on that.
Of course World Politics does have a big influence on our sport. While our numbers may be shrinking surprisingly the level of participation in World and European championships is increasing. The break up of the Soviet Union had some effect on that but not much and the dissoultion of Yugoslavia.
This later political event created a number of small (hence reduced travel times) countries with strong modelling heritage that helped keep the Champs number up and changed the dynamics of the World Cup.
Europe - A Scottish Perspective
From: chris edge
Nurse SCAT,
At the risk of giving one of the readers of your fine organ a heart-attack or worse, I'm a European, er, and British, and Scottish for that matter. And whilst it may not be a book, a internet-thingy called Wikipedia (never heard of it myself) carefully lists for Messrs Achterberg and any other confused readers the list of countries in Europe, details here :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
You will see that the United Kingdom, which includes Scotland as well as other places, IS included as are Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and many others. Maybe there are libraries and shops in the Achterberg vicinity that stock suitable books which can be consulted as well ?
EoB - European, oh Brother !
European Definition
From: Martin Dilly
_European Definition._
For the avoidance of confusion, as far as I recall, the FAI definition follows the Olympic one. A nation is eligible to compete in a European Championships if it lies west of the Urals (not sure how that affected either the USSR or Russia, which lies on both sides) or has a Mediterranean seaboard (hence Israel).
Of course we're European; till the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago Britain was joined to the rest of the Continent as the Channel didn't exist and you could walk there.
Martin Dilly (Proudly European, but now ashamed to be British)
Editor's Note - I see that EoB's definition is different from Mr Dilly's. EoB's does not encroach/include the southern coast of the Mediterranian
What could go wrong ...
From:Stuart Darmon
Let's have a referendum on whether to allow the USA into Europe. What could possibly go wrong? stuart
Stuart
What's the big deal ..
From: Murphy, Jack
what's the big deal? the US is bigger than Europe. I'm thinking about driving to the King Orange. 2400 miles.
Dublin to Kiev is only 1900..
... -j
Editor's Comment
Jack at the risk of opening another can of worms. one of the issues you as Q flyer are protected from or denied the opportunity is taking part in Category 1 event.
That's FAI speak for a World or Continental Championship. Because there is not one for F1Q - backgrond information can be obtained off line from Aram
Finals with Capped-Flyoffs?
If you want to find winners efficiently – just use the standard contest format. It eliminates fliers that don’t max out, and more fliers each consecutive flyoff. In fact, we used a 14-round format for many years to select teams and when more than 3 fliers were clean, a flyoff was an elegant way to identify the alternatives.
Indeed, flyoff skills should also be evaluated. To this end, our Finals evolved into a double contest format – to assure flyoffs are included in the mix. However, the double standard contest format we use really tested different flyoff attributes. In the just completed Finals, the 10-minute morning flyoff in B in Day-1, Alex exceeded 7 minutes while 3 fliers tied with 6:42 (a rare event), testing pure performance. But in Day-2 in the 5-minute B flyoff, flown in powerful downdraft conditions, Blake did just over 3 minutes. This was a test of either particular skills to choose the flyoff’s sweet spot or just good luck.
The skill of choosing a flyoff’s sweet spot is very field-specific that can’t be consistently repeated. So, the more reliable attribute is performance – that on average would win more flyoffs.
Measuring performance in flyoffs conditions is different than trying to eliminate as many fliers as possible using the standard contest format flyoffs. To test true performance one would require: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. holding the flyoffs within an hour of sunset or within half an hour of sun rise and 1 fixing the max close to the best performance of an event. (For B it’s about 7-minutes; it’s lower for A and C.) These flyoffs are called capped-flyoffs and where first discussed in SEN 2189.
However, gauging performance is not straight forward, as the presence of non-neutral conditions can only be known ex-post (after the fact). So, when only one B flier exceeded 7 minutes, it implies reasonably neutral conditions; but had at least 25% of the fliers maxed the 7 minutes, it indicates the presence of thermal conditions. Conversely, when no flier did more than say 5:30 in a 7 minute max, it indicates the presence of downdrafts. In such cases, the performance flyoff should be reflown. (True Monday quarter backing!)
So, a sufficient condition to test performance is: 0 A capped-flyoff will be reflown if at least 25% of the fliers max, or when no flier exceeded say 80% of the capped-flyoff’s max.
The next question is who should participate in the capped-flyoffs. The answer actually is 0 everyone – as we do not want to eliminate a good performance flier who might have dropped one second in the regular round.
Each contest day should include 2007-03-12 22:18:15 two capped-flyoffs, flown either in the early morning or late evening. And if a double capped-flyoff is held, the first model would not be retrieved to save time. It’s also a good test to bring two well-trimmed performance models.
So, in a capped-flyoff format, contestants would fly the regular 5 or 7 thermal rounds AND participate in two capped-flyoff (even if they dropped time in the thermal rounds) held in the early morning, late evening or both. And if thermal activity was detected (ex-post) in a capped-flyoff – violating 0, it would be reflown.
To a related matter. One of the weaknesses of the current Finals is that two events are flown back-to-back (on consecutive days) frequently in similar weather conditions. A better test is to fly under more diverse conditions which can be achieved if 2007-03-12 22:18:15 a day separates the two contests of each event. This would require adding a day to the Finals (day-1 to day-4). For example: if A is flown in day-1 and day-3, B would be flown on day-2 and day-4. C, the smallest event, could be flown either on day-1 and on days-3 or 4, or day-2 and day-4. The longer format would allow more possibilities of holding capped-flyoff, when needed.
A capped-flyoff format would tease out performance in future Finals. Whether this approach will be adopted is another matter.
Aram
.................
Roger Morrell