E-glide FES mini competition

[Paule]

are you able to start the server? i cant see it in the List

[Vertigo]

A few clarifications;

In the form and briefing I asked for 2 different ways of timing, a preliminary one (like using screenshot), and a "official" one to be filled out later. On hind sight, the preliminary one is/was not needed; I hadnt realized you could see your own flight analysis in Condor Club immediately after uploading. I thought that was only later when all results are published in CC. Going forward, the preliminary one (screenshot based) will not be needed or requested.

The time I need is this one:


This is the in game "wall time" when you crossed the finish line. Its what you would see when you check your condor watch on the finish line. (the duration below that is your task time, but it is relative to crossing the start line, which is incorrect for regatta unless you flew over the line the very second it opened). The spreadsheet I use knows (approx) what time the line openend (or at least when it should open, until I update it), and will calculate the correct flight duration. Note that in the google form this field is marked as duration and not a time, confusingly, but if I set it to time, you can not enter seconds. So ignore that, my spreadsheet handles this, just enter 16:25:07 if that is the condor time when you finished.

Also note that even after submitting, you can open the link to the form again, and correct your results if you made a mistake or "forgot" your penalty points

The result page may take a few minutes to update, google only refreshes it every 5 min, I can not control that (unless I host a site somewhere someday).

Going forward.

Using google forms to let people self report results, and with condor club flight analysis providing verifiable times/penalties/TPs, this concept seems completely manageable, and barely more work for me than doing a CC competition; there is one little thing I need to address still, to ensure a bad actor cant mess up someone else's result, but I think I have a good solution for that without asking your email. Ill just ask for a "secret" that you can make up, and that you need to fill out every time in the form.

Since it seemed many of you enjoyed it despite the (too?) steep difficulty today, Im willing to turn this in to a multiday competition from next week on. For now I foresee racing on Saturdays only, I plan on doing 8 races.

Scoring will be different than what you are used to, I will not do "best X out of Y results". I will instead be using Lowlands Cup style scoring. This system allows pilots a decent and fairly representative score even if you cant fly very often. It still gives an incentive to fly regularly, while punishing, especially high ranked pilots, every time they make a big mistake; and there will be plenty of opportunities to make mistakes

With LLC scoring, your overall score is an average of all your day scores. Only started races count, but every day you do start counts towards your average. Having a bad day means your overall score will go down.

Everyone starts with a fictional "day zero" result that has a zero score, so the first day winner cant win the competition with the maximum possible score, simply by no longer competing. Every flight you start, you can improve your score, but especially the higher ranked pilots, also risk making it worse.

With the number of participants we have now, I think GP scoring for day results is perfect. With GP scoring the day winner gets 10 points, then 8,7,6,5...,1. Combining this with LLC multi day scoring means after the first day, the day winner will have (10 +0) /2 = 5 point average overall. Someone flying 5 out of 8 races and finishing second place (8 points) in each of his 5 races, would have (5 days x 8 points + 0 start result) / 6 = ~6.7 points overall. After all 8 race days the maximum possible score would be (8 days x10 points + 0) /9 = ~8.9.

Crashes will obviously be scored zero, but besides dragging down your average, there wont be any additional penalties, so its no worse than finishing 10th.

Should we get significantly more participants than we have now, I may tweak the GP scoring, stretch it a little bit in order to score more than just the best 9 players every race.

[arneh]

I liked tonights task, it was certainly a different challenge than usual!

With the FES it it was not too hard. Just had to use it strategicly But without FES it would have been very difficula at those altitudes! I love to be challenged in these new ways, and trying to discover the best use of the battery capacity. So thanks for hosting this competition.

[JLN]

Hello,

Very interesting competition ( For me very difficult.)

I hoped have 1 point and finally 0

As everybody when he has penalty I dont understand from where come the 143 I saw.

My start was correct 161kmh 1155 m
I did not enter airspace
I did not enter cloud
So What ?

It would be very good to C3 to add a possibility in the Notam : Enable Engine, with a "Max Power Usable" to adjust the use of the FES. This in order to not stop the PDA which is really hard when we have no indications at all.

[Vertigo]

I do not see any penalty points for you in Condor Club? This is your flight, right?
https://www.condor.club/analysis/0/?res=282001
I also downloaded and checked your FTR, and there were no penalty points there either. Are you sure you saw them in flight? Did you happen to make a screenshot and/or notice when they appeared?

Anyway I removed the penalty points for you. Not that it helps you reclaim your point, which I do think you deserve.
200pp * 5s for airspace infraction is probably not enough. I cant change the 200 points, but I may bump the time penalty to 10s per penalty point.

It would be very good to C3 to add a possibility in the Notam : Enable Engine, with a "Max Power Usable" to adjust the use of the FES.

Yes, proper support in condor for the e-glide format would be very nice, but not trivial to do right, so this might take a while. Until then, we make do with what we have and also prove its worth implementing. As for the PDA; consider switching to the LX9070 which continues to navigate properly, or if you can use a second monitor, xcsoar or comomap.

[Vertigo]

I see what happened. You got 143.7 POINTS. Not penalty points. The points are "pointless" (pardon the pun), as condor scores you as outlanded the moment you turn on your FES, so you get some random number of distance points. Thats where the 143.7 comes from!

[JLN]

Thanks a lot, Vertigo, for searching and explaining !!

[AlexH]

I really enjoyed the task yesterday, even though it was quite tricky. Without the FES, it would likely have been impossible. I haven’t flown much in situations where there are two overlapping airspace—one above and one below—like near TP1. When I saw the airspace warning, I thought I had to dive under the airspace, so I went close to VNE. Then I realized there were actually two airspace—one above and one below—with only a narrow 300m band to fly through. I need to use the side view to check airspace more often and pay closer attention during the briefing.

The task and competition are fantastic! Just a note on the FES system: it’s simulated really well to show how it works for short usage. However, when you use it for longer periods, you get a yellow "Low Voltage! Reduce Power!" warning fairly quickly, at around 60% battery capacity. After that, the maximum available power keeps decreasing until, with the last few battery icons, the power is so low that it’s not enough to maintain level flight.

In the Condor LAK glider, the FES system seems to have a significant higher capacity/duration I would normally expect. I finished the task with two battery icons left and could still use full power for a few minutes afterward.

[Vertigo]

Interesting. Uros actually owns a mini lak himself, so I assumed he got that pretty close to reality ? Well, aside from the 10000C engine temps

I cant speak about the real thing, but for condor races, the battery is indeed large, especially as we can use ~2x more than the real e-glide. I considered doing a tow start to 50m, forcing everyone to use some of their battery to get up there, but I fear that might become too much of a lottery. Instead I will probably put the start line 50m above ground next time, in an area with little or no lift, then at least its the same for everyone.

[JLN]

Hello,
Would it be possible the next time to increase the joining time (not to begin flight but to have a longer time to take note of wheather zones, airspace and prepare the flight.)
30 mn mini would be good.

[Vertigo]

I did (and will) provide a briefing with airspace and weather zones a full day in advance, both here and on the result page. Also with airstart and 10 min warmup, you can enter the server at the last minute, I always make sure its not difficult to get a good start. But sure, I can launch the server a bit earlier if you want, and increase join time. Stop join will still be 19:00 UTC.

[Zakson85]

Start from 50m, rain at the point, very little lift in the mountains, tight zones. The difficulty level seems to increase too much from flight to flight . This doesn't sound like fun anymore. I would slow down a bit

[Vertigo]

A few tweaks to the scoring;
Every condor penalty point will result in 10 seconds per point.
Everyone who finishes the race with no airspace infractions (<200 penalty points), but no daily ranking score (10th or lower) will still get 0.5 points.

The daily briefing/result and overall result page is now online here:

https://shorturl.at/bez9Q (HTML format, ~5min delay)
https://shorturl.at/3AUC8 (Google Docs)

Note that the overall ranking currently uses the training days, and has test data, I will obviously change that later, but it may give you a feel for how LLC scoring works. Im still working on it, so expect weird results at times.

Start from 50m, rain at the point, very little lift in the mountains, tight zones. The difficulty level seems to increase too much from flight to flight . This doesn't sound like fun anymore. I would slow down a bit

A 50m start doesnt make it harder, it would just be a trick to make you have less battery capacity for the rest of the race (more in line with the real e-glide), which, if anything would allow easier tasks. But this wont be necessary every time, or in the next race, in which I promise, there will be no rain, nor even overlapping airspace zones. Though I cant promise it will be easy

As for those overlapping airspaces; Im not gonna use that often, but when I saw that, it was too good not to try in E-glide. Sure its not very realistic, except if you consider ATC asking you to "maintain your current altitude", which I know has happened to more than one person here in a glider. Without FES .

[Zakson85]

The overlapping zones are very interesting. A full battery gives a lot of tactical possibilities that a glider without a drive does not have. It seems to me that taking this "joker" will immediately take away the possibility of combining and will turn e-gliding into gliding

[Vertigo]

The Minilak can climb ~1500m or cruise for >100Km on a full charge. Thats a lot on a typical short condor flight. In the real Eglide format you are restricted to 2KWH (about 2/3 of the minlak battery, assuming the newer Gen4 battery is modelled) and thats on much longer flights, so its really not much of a stretch to make people use ~20% of their battery right after start.

Of course, it is all a balancing act, and only by trying will we figure it out.