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Fri, Dec 21 2018, 12:19:23 pm GMT

More on weight and performance

Big guys rule

ballast|Bruce Goldsmith|competition|FAI|PWC|scoring

Bruce Goldsmith «Bruce Goldsmith» writes:

The weightless project is a kind of live experiment using this competition as a guinea pig. We have had the first event and this worked well but we learnt some important lessons.

The first event had 3 weight classes The weight is total flying weight including glider:

Up to 80Kg
80-100kg
over 100kg

The first comp went generally well, but there were some issues. We had a couple of PWC pilots who tried the standard competition tricks of flying ballasted up to improve performance. They were carrying ballast to be loaded right at the limit of their weight category. We had lightweight pilots (67kg) ballasting up to be right at the 100kg limit. This is exactly the type of thing we are trying to stop with the weightless concept.

The idea is to remove the weight advantage so people don't have to fly with ballast at all. So I analyzed the results from the first weightless comp, to try to work out how weight effects the results. The data from one comp is not a huge database for such an analysis, but at least its a start.

I found the most dominant influence on comp results was experience. So I had to compensate first for the effect of experience before being able to see the effect of weight.

Here is the graph that resulted. There is a trend but also a high scatter, so results are not super clear cut.

Weight Vs. Experience:

PTV = Poids (weight) total volant = all up flying weight

From this I plan to test a new handicap system for Weightless 2019. We will remove the weight categories and have a handicap system instead. The handicap will be based on 0.25% score adjustment (score of each pilot per task) for every 1Kg in weight. This is the conclusion drawn from the analysis of the first weightless comp. Fine details of how this handicap will be applied are not yet decided. Anyway its an ongoing experiment, so we will try it next year and see how it works.

As the BGD weightless scoring is experimental and the scoring system is 'in development' we will be using this prototype handicap scoring system only for the event itself. The results submitted to FAI will be the standard results without any weight adjustment. So effectively there will be 2 different scores for the event. The Weight adjusted scores and the standard FAI scores.

Prizes at the event will follow weight adjusted scores. FAI ranking will follow FAI scores.

Discuss "More on weight and performance" at the Oz Report forum   link»


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