Is the DG1000S an unfair advantage in School class?

[GlidingNico(NBE)]

So I was looking up for the new task of Tchin Tchin which is in School class today and found out that the DG1000S is an unfair advantage on all the other gliders by the glide ratio, at first I thought this was the only thing, and then I saw this:

[OXO]

So what do you suggest?

[LFM]

Hi, OXO couldn't be done as it is in Club Class. That is, so that water cannot be given in the school class, but it can be filled in the OPEN and ALL class.

[wickid]

Remember that School class is handicapped. The rest of the gliders can be ballasted to their maximum wingloading as well by ticking the "fixed ballast" or "two pilots" box. If you take the handicap into account you will see that it will still be hard to beat the Blanik and especially the 1-26

The DG1001 has a handicap op 104 against 63 for the 1-26 and 78 for the Blanik.

[GlidingNico(NBE)]

Remember that School class is handicapped

Yea I know but it might be that if you have full water even the ASK-21 could be no match for the DG1000S since it would be a lot quicker.
Maybe with no water, the handicap can properly balance it. I also think as well that the SGS-1-26E can beat the DG1000S with his handicap but not sure also the Blanik might still be hard to beat because it has 30 handicap less.

Yea thinking about it maybe the DG1000S compared to other gliders like Blanik and under can still have a hard time even with full ballast, it's still all to test out in race.

[wickid]

Remember that School class is handicapped

Yea I know but it might be that if you have full water even the ASK-21 could be no match for the DG1000S since it would be a lot quicker.
Maybe with no water, the handicap can properly balance it. I also think as well that the SGS-1-26E can beat the DG1000S with his handicap but not sure.

I am sure. I checked the handicap corrected XCSpeeds. It is slightly worse than the Blanik and slightly better than the ASK21. The 1-26 still beats them by a wide margin.

[GlidingNico(NBE)]

Remember that School class is handicapped

Yea I know but it might be that if you have full water even the ASK-21 could be no match for the DG1000S since it would be a lot quicker.
Maybe with no water, the handicap can properly balance it. I also think as well that the SGS-1-26E can beat the DG1000S with his handicap but not sure.

I am sure. I checked the handicap corrected XCSpeeds. It is slightly worse than the Blanik and slightly better than the ASK21. The 1-26 still beats them by a wide margin.

oh ok thank you, I think I'm gonna see how the leaderboard will be today in Tchin Tchin and then I will say here how it was.

[GlidingNico(NBE)]

So what do you suggest?

I thought to suggest disabling water in school class but thinking the DG1000S has a lot of handicap more than the Blanik and let's not talk about the SGS1-26E so it might still be possible to easily outmatch it with those gliders. I think tho that the ASK-21 could have a hard time.

[wickid]

You can check it yourself in the flightplanner. Maybe you know you can find the theoretical XC speed from the polar in the flightplanner.

Theoretical XCspeed.jpg

If you set the expected thermal strength as the MC setting in the flight planner you see the XC speed where the glide angle line crosses the horizontal axis. So theoretically if you climb with 3 m/s and you glide between thermals at the optimum speed (178 kph in this case) you should average about 114 kph.

The above does not take into account the difference between your start and finish altitude, if you start at 1000 meters and finish at 0 meters, that is free average speed at 178 kph

If you correct that to the standard handicap of 100, you loose 3.9% so your corrected XCSpeed is around 109 kph. The same for the blanik give a XCspeed of 85 kph and you gain 28,2% from the handicap gives a corrected XCspeed of 109 kph as well.

[6266]

If you fly with the SGS1-26 in School against the DG1000 and water is disallowed you have the same handicap as in All, where water is allowed. That's not logical.

That's different with Club. In Club ballast is disallowed for all planes, allowed in All with the same handicap. But all planes can fly either with or without ballast in the same (all or club) task. There it's logical to disallow ballast in Club and allow in all.

Have no idea to solv that, but think it's not ok to disallow ballast in School, because it's not really a class, only a category

[wickid]

Well, normally the gliders that are in School would normally compete in club class in real life if you choose to fly them in non FAI events. But the Condor clubclass follows the FAI clubclass glider list. They put all the other gliders that would normally compete in clubclass but are not on the FAI list in School. So I see NBE's point in disallowing ballast, but that also removes the option to add the second pilot for the Blanik and ASK21. That means you again have the same problem that the DG1000 still has a much higher wingloading. So removing the ballast from Schoolclass does not make sense.

[GlidingNico(NBE)]

Well, normally the gliders that are in School would normally compete in club class in real life if you choose to fly them in non FAI events. But the Condor clubclass follows the FAI clubclass glider list. They put all the other gliders that would normally compete in clubclass but are not on the FAI list in School. So I see NBE's point in disallowing ballast, but that also removes the option to add the second pilot for the Blanik and ASK21. That means you again have the same problem that the DG1000 still has a much higher wingloading. So removing the ballast from Schoolclass does not make sense.

Yea but considering the handicap probably only the ASK-21 is gonna have a hard time in the meanwhile gliders from the Blanik to under will have handicap to balance everything, but it's all to test in race, and today Tchin Tchin is in school class so time to try it out.

[Paul_UK]

This can be easily handled. All the task setter has to do is tick the 'Water-Ballasting is not permitted' box when uploading the task to CC.

Anyone that flies with ballast will not score. Up to the pilot to read the NOTAM (it'd be wise to put a note of NO BALLAST ALLOWED) and if they don't....

So it's in the laps of the task setter is the way I see it.

[Kestrel_BY]

Before I start : disclaimer, I haven't done any school class race since the release of the DG-1000, so I can't talk about this particular glider accurately. That being said :

I've heard countless of times that handicaps are unfair, and that x or y gliders cannot be beaten. I've heard the EB-29 is unbeatable, I've also heard the JS3-15 is unbeatable, or that you can't compete against a JS3-15 with an 18m because of the performances of the JS3 in 15m are "the same as the ones of an 18m". I've also heard the JS1-21 can't win a multiclass race, and I heard the ASW20 cannot be beaten in club class. Yet I've had many many examples that the above isn't true. I've even often taken a lot of pleasure with challenging myself to fly the JS1-21 or an 18m glider, or even the libelle in multiclass races, just to prove that they can win if you adapt your piloting style to your glider, and it did, most of the time, work pretty well.

So here's my opinion on it, from what I've seen, experienced and felt, it's not word of god though, just my observations :
Firstly, people generally tend to only look at the polar of the glider for a transition, but never compare them when they're climbing. Of course the DG-1000 is much better at transitionning, but it also probably climbs much slower than a Ka6 for example. Why is that, will you ask : well of course the sink rate isn't much different, but its weight and speed make its spiral much larger, putting you farther from the thermal's center, and on top of that its wing loading degrades its performances much more above 45° of angle (it's the similar reason why I often beat JS3-15 with some 18m gliders).

Secondly, the handicap is in fact quite accurate, the difference here between the DG1000 and the ASK21 is the same than between the pégase and the 15m-flapped gliders. It's my experience that it compensates the average speed well, integrating the difference in climb rates, transitions, and max L/D. This is however generally wrong for the very very fast races sometimes found on condor, but we're talking of average speeds above 200 km/ (I generally tend to avoid these as I find them much less interesting).

And then finally, people often fly every gliders by setting the expected climb rate as the MC. That's exactly what you want to do when you're flying club-class, standard or 15m. But in some gliders (especially in 18m/open class gliders), if the thermals are wide enough, it's often more interesting to set the MC a little lower, and to "dolphin" to climb half as often as smaller gliders. People often look at the polar without taking into account the difficulty of a glider, and how it's supposed to be flown.

So that's my take at it, as I said it above, this is just a personnal opinion, not the bible, don't mind me if you think I'm wrong. But from my experience I think that handicaps work fairly well, indeed they aren't perfect, and indeed in some cases (like in the 200+ km/h ridge races) they're not 100% fair, but when the weather is rather realistic, and up to 190/200 km/h of average speed, they're compensating the gap of performances between gliders quite well.

[Bre901]

If you look at yesterday's Tchin-tchin race (1st school race with DG1000s I know of) , you can see that the game is still open.
https://www.condor.club/ftrrank/0/?fpl= ... 0c0cf0b2a3
It was a ridge flight, but with high passes to cross, so one couldn't zoom along the ridges close to VNE.

However on the two last legs, there was some rather strong headwind, which means that the low-handicap gliders had a tough job