Month 1 musings

Did you link to the right spreadsheet? This is the one with the aircraft data.

But anyway, thanks so much for setting this up, Jimmy!
It's a great concept, and must have taken a lot of work.
I enjoyed every part of it, and hope there'll be lots more!
I hope it's all automated? Or otherwise you'll be swamped, once this becomes really popular! (Which I'm sure it will sooner or later.)

So here's my thoughts on how we might make it even better:
First of all, I'm afraid the handicapping system probably didn't work too well.
I voted for it too at first, and was very impressed with what teson1 had come up with (it was obvious that some very creative thinking went into the whole thing), but unfortunately it fails to account for the different planes' climbing rates.
The speed differences are covered well by the system, but if a plane (due to its superior power) can take a shortcut over some steep cliff, whereas the less powerful planes will have to take the long route around, then this time/distance savings is not taken into account.

I did some benchmark tests before I actually picked a plane, and it was very obvious from the second leg on that raw power will still win, as I could fly right up the steep ridge next to the airport (purple path), when other planes had to take detours:


So we might have to rethink the whole classification thing once more...
I can't think of a better system myself, and I'm afraid there probably won't be one. (I used to be involved in car racing, and they've done handicapping systems for decades, and there will still always be the same cars that win their classes.)

The second thing we might have to think about is tasks like "follow the river" or "follow the road". Since this is a race people will cut corners (quite literally). In car racing this comes with a natural penalty (bumpy, bad traction, etc), so competitors will keep it to a minimum.
But in air racing no such automatic penalty occurs, so I don't know how we can enforce that the corners that are cut aren't too massive. We may just have to restrict these "follow" tasks to tight canyons, where you don't have another option than to stay on track, or you will run into a wall.

But other than that, I think you got a pretty good thing running already!

Trout lake airstrip on my machine was at around 1900ft rather than 1300, some anomaly there?

> kinks, improvements

Frankly, it's a great set-up already - very viable and interesting.
Nothing fundamental to change.

Keep the circuits as interesting and varied as the first ones and it should be enough to please both the competitive pilots as well as the leisurely crowd just along for flying through interesting scenery, and keep all coming back for more.

I agree with kronzky that the handycap system is not perfect.

It is encouraging that the Scout is at least able to mix in at the top even with the simple current system (though it has to be recognised that avian flying the C185 (BS) would probably have been right up there with kronzky if he hadn't had that aborted flight on leg 4 that counted as a crash - very tight flying both, likely better than mine - congrats).

However, the slow planes seem to be clearly disadvantaged on the legs where significant climbing is required indeed.
Not only because more powerful planes can take a more direct path if a very steep climb is required (reduced flight distance), but also (mainly) due to the fact that the climb time is longer (longer at slow speed =time lost vs cruise speed).

Very preliminary analysis of flights 2, 4 and 5, comparing teson1 and kronsky's flights indicate that climbing through 7000 ft adds about 40-80 seconds for the Scout (ref speed 120 Kts) vs the C185 (155 kts) to total flight time.

Further testing under well controlled conditions ("clear weather", no wind) with a wider range of planes, and the same pilot flying for consistency of results, would be needed to more clearly determine the impact of climb performance of different planes on the flight time.
I'm interested to conduct such further flight tests.

Once we understand more about the performance of different planes during climb it might be possible to tweak the MCT attributed to each leg to better account for the different climb performance of the planes.

Ideally this correction factor could directly be calculated from the required climb of the
leg (MFD and the vertical climb height of a leg would enter into calculation of MCT).

If that works, a disadvantage would still be that MCT (should rather be called "Reference flight time" RFT) would be less intuitive to grasp, become a formula. So the question is whether pilots would accept to compete against a "formula".

But before we could accept such a method we would require solid data that demonstrates that the playing field is indeed more level if applied.

Unless there is consensus that this is not something we want to pursue, I would be willing to run such tests (I enjoy understanding the performance of planes and working on this type of projects so no worry there).
Once we have data we can decide whether this is something to go further with.

But I won't get this done before the May circuit, so I'd suggest we go on with the system as is for now, unless somebody has a clever idea on a new system.

Gunter

It's interesting that you mention running some test against data for high-climb rates... the first three courses were all designed many months ago, and the next course will have an immediate climb of almost 6000 feet (maybe higher, but in that area) for 2 of the 3 legs. But unlike this first course, it's all designed to fly in a straight line. There will probably be a big disadvantage to the Scouts (et al) because the distance between take off and the first mountain peak that must be directly overflown is quite small - without going back and looking, I assume that most planes will probably have to make a circling climb, but I suspect that the 185 could probably get to altitude before reaching the first obstacle at the maximum rate of climb configuration. At least one of us (me) will continue to fly a slower plane - at least we can get some data after the fact, if nothing else.

The third course will probably be more fair for the smaller planes, because the whole course will be flown at low altitudes. There will also be no direct routing, and no prescribed "following". You must simply get from point A to point B in a mountainous region, following whatever route you choose without going higher than a given altitude, knowing that a direct route will result in a "controlled flight into terrain".

As for automation... I would love to find someone up on the technology to automate as much as possible. I know that there are several flight verification clients out there for VAs and such, with PHP backends to track things. If anyone could develop a system to "plug in" the race course, which whatever client uploads the data to, and the scores are popped out automatically would be awesome... although probably a far fetched idea.

kronzky,
went to your web site.
www.kronzky.info/fs
Wow ! Very nice gauges ! Good work !!
I downloaded most of them (including the sextant one which I had planned to get anyway).

You are right that we can never hope to design a handycap system that completely equalises performance of all planes.

What only we can hope for is to have a system that brings planes to a potential to score within, say, 1-2 minute per flight in the most unfavorable case (say, the cub), and most plane less than that. But we're not nearly there yet, and not sure whether it is even posible ...
That gives at least a small chance for a skilled and lucky pilot flying a disfavored plane to score close to the top (but the other pilots have to make errors for him to achieve that).

The whole objective of such a handycap system is to allow pilots to fly a plane they like and care for, and still have a fighting chance.

It clearly does have drawbacks. We've realised that there still is a significant difference in scoring of different planes. And I think the pilots flying the Pacer have also realised that it can't compete as the cruise speed is too close to the barber pole, so that pilots can't really fly at the maximum speed. That system clearly would benefit from some improvement.

The question is do pilots prefer to fly a plane of their choice, and be potentially disfavored, or do they prefer everybody to compete on an equal footing) ?

Your proposal indeed is one that would place all pilots on equal footing (we'd still have to find planes in FSX and FS9 with same performance, or restrict to FSX).
The question is whether pilots would be interested in such a system. They may have to fly planes which they're not interrested in.
We'd have to look what quality planes we find. The Mikko Maliniemi Maule comes to mind as an excellent quality plane (that I'd be delighted to fly).

It's definitely a valid proposal if we want to have all pilots on a completely equal footing (and I may have misguided people in thinking the performance would be completely leveled out by the handycap system ...).

Why not try out if and see how we like it ?

Now that we have the BPRL going and a group of pilots interrested, maybe Jimmy could set up one of the circuits or even legs with a fixed plane for all to fly so we could try out how we like it ?

Wow, that sounds great!
Even closer to how a sextant is used in reality !
And it would allow to take a star shot, and only then look up the Hc and Zn in the tables, like in reality. And you'd have to be really careful to look up the right values, and also pay attention to timing the shots to the second ...
Nice !
Looks like quite a project though.
And you probably wouldn't have a very large public indeed.
I'd use it !