Discipline
Paragliding XC
What do we want ?
New CCC gliders with much more stable profiles. Much less collapses during the whole task = less accidents.
No more race on the fastest trimming and higher all-up-weight.
No more race on the fastest trimming and higher all-up-weight.
How do we achieve that ?
A new CCC set of rules. Replace the 14cm limiter rule by 18cm or no limiter.
In mandatory addition, score the task differently without the massive reward on maximum speed during final glide with excess altitude.
In mandatory addition, score the task differently without the massive reward on maximum speed during final glide with excess altitude.
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As a fellow designer, I can only say that so far the evidence (experimental and theoretical) that I observed on my end converges with Luc's presentation, which I think is brilliant. The CESS seems to solve the challenge of opening up the CCC to higher collapse resistance without going back to open class madness at top speed. We also double checked the calculations with my team and we end up with the same results.
Tom
In reply to As a fellow designer, I can… by TomLolies
Thank Tom,
It is important other designer and brand do confirm what Luc state. We need some more.
Hello Luc
I read about a lot of changeing the task and waypoint changes with imo wild ideas and ideas on how to make scoring even less understandeable for pilots.
But, I guess the CESS
- is understandeable for pilots
- our GPSs are accurate enough to measure
- the GPS can make the needed calculations (cones and circles are easier to calculate)
- the pilots has direct feedback crossing the line
With some other ideas, the pilots see only after scoring how much bonus, penalty they have, etc. More of this, i guess makes the sport less attractive to pilots.
Is FTV questionned for PG comps? (initially developed for League Cups) in HG, only a few pilots think about that.
In reply to Hello Luc I read about a lot… by Toni Crottet
FTV is now used 100% in PG competition. For us, it's better than any other system we used before.
Hello,
As a voice for the Air Design R&D department, we are facing the same issues that Luc mentioned, and we are in favor of an evolution in this direction — allowing more stable profiles to be classified under the CCC category.
We have already discussed this topic several times with other brands during the Coupe Icare (FLOW, Skywalk, Ozone, Niviuk, AirDesign), and there seemed to be a shared consensus in favor of this evolution, which — perhaps counterintuitively — would actually lead to increased safety.
In reply to Hello, As a voice for the… by Hugo-airdesign
Thanks Hugo. I believe we definitely should open a Project then. Looking forward to Thursday.
Can't comment on the CCC wing design side of things, but regarding CESS, it's a very neat, elegant engineering solution, but it seems very difficult to calculate an optimal in real world conditions (at least for the less technically minded pilots).
Altitude bonus seems a better solution for all-round pilot use, still hard to optimise correctly, but I guess that is/would be part of the fun!
However... Is there a reason why you don't just set a "deck" (lower altitude limit) for the ESS cylinder? So in order to tag it you have to be above a certain altitude?
I guess that's essentially similar to the altitude bonus system, but it also means there's zero potential upside in arriving low, regardless the speed/time equation.
Perhaps you could go for altitude penalty for low arrival (as point percentage?), where the penalty effectively becomes 100% below some safe height limit, if you wanted to add a sliding scale...
Anyway, just thoughts, but for what it's worth (not much!) personally I would favour a modification of the ESS cylinder scoring/arrival height rules over the CESS concept - however, very much in favour of updating the ESS approach to add altitude margins in some way, shape or form...
Could this concept of CESS be extended to the turnpoints of the tasks? I mean, replace TP cylinders by inverted cones with a slope to discuss.
Pros:
- To cover less distance pilots might fly higher, which is generally good for safety.
- By being incentivized to fly higher, pilots might fly slowlier, which is generally good for safety.
Cons:
- A compromize in between height and speed that is difficult to assess while flying.
- ?
In reply to Could this concept of CESS… by Maxime Bellemin
It could even be extended to the start (start on entry cone), so there is less stress on being all agglutinated at base.
But I suggest we don't complicate things now. A small change is already complicated enough to happen.
Again, I think you need to keep it simple.
Altitude points at waypoints (climbs?) as an addition to lead out points might be interesting??
Worth mentioning that even amongst very experienced comp pilots, already the scoring systems of LOP & FTV cause the most confusion.
We've got to keep any system simple - ideally even simpler than those that already exist!
Great material, Luc - thanks for sharing the data!
Nevertheless, I believe the conclusions and proposals drawn from it are unfortunately not quite right.
1. The MacCready theory is relative to the conditions the pilot is currently experiencing (as Baptiste explains here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKis-uXcUUQ&t=305s
).
Even though 6 m/s climbs are rare, 2–3 m/s sink or 20 km/h headwinds are quite common during competitions.
In those situations, pilots will use maximum speed, which in the proposed approach would be just as unstable — and even more unstable.
2. Another example is ridge soaring or flying along a convergence line - pilots will use the full range of available speed.
The proposed solutions, such as the Conical End of Speed Section or ESS with altitude bonus, may indeed help reduce the use of full speed at the end of the task, but they don’t address the above issues during the task itself - and may even amplify them. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
By the way, why are the CCC certification tests actually performed with a shortened limiter of 100–105mm instead of full speed, given that full speed is available to pilots and can be the most unstable configuration?
Wouldn’t introducing some form of stability verification at the full available production speed (or even at an extended speed, e.g. 18 cm) be desirable?
I'm also surprised by how much trimming the lines and micro-tuning affect speed and stability. At the same time, I feel that detecting this during testing is almost impossible. Or is it?
In reply to Great material, Luc - thanks… by Mateusz Gajczewski
There are 4 things which tempers the very rare cases we are talking about:
1- Glider stability is not changed during a competition. So the manufacturers are designing the wing that will win, not the one that may have an edge on a very rare cases at the expense of being handicapped most of time.
2- Playing close to unstable zone makes you not as able to use the speed advantage in turbulent air.
3- At high McCready numbers, the advantage of being at optimum speed is very slim, as explained in the document. I'll share the excel file I made for quick McCready calculation (sorry, I won't have access to it before 10 days).
4- On my model, I used a theoritical polynomial function to try to match as good as I can measured points. However, the end of the polar is steeper in reality, so the McCready optimum speed is in reality lower than in the calculations for extreme cases, and the advantage of being optimum even thinner.
Regarding testing stability at high speed. That's a great idea. In the EN, there is one test that does some form of stability check, it is the one where you go full speed and then you pull 25% of the brake range within 2 seconds. The glider must stay open. Although this test seems very objective, we fail to trust each other, manufacturers and test centers, in the way it is applied. When a manufacturer test the wing of an other manufacturer, even when it's just a way to understand how the wing is designed, he can find this test to not work. It's still true nowadays but it has no real consequences when it's only about wings for leisure activity. But when it comes to highly disputed competition, this reality can transform a competition into a disaster because of pilots, manufacturers and test centers conflicts. That's why, when it comes to wing class of competition, the rules needs to be black and white and as undisputable as possible. It does not mean that we should not try to find something. The difficulty also it that a canopy can evolve with time on that matter.
CESS has already been tested, but it was not so great. I was at many competitions, where we had it
It does sounds good and could improve safety, but "only" for ESS.
And the downside is, that it brings a lot of confision. Nobody knows who is the winner, or at which place.. until the "black box" spit out the numbers.
There is aslo another issue. The height accuracy. Which is NOT good enough!
It might be better to have certain-fixed height arrival over the ESS. Otherwise penalty.
Besides that. IF, would eventually go with CESS again. Then we should use it on all waypoints!!
And ONE MORE THOUGHT. Maybe to eliminate high/cloud flying problem at SSS. There could be "inverted" conical cylinder for SSS (exit example). The higher you are, the smaller is the cylinder. Therefore, you would not aim to be as high as possible.
And one more thought.
What if all cylinders had an option, to not actually tuch them. You could turn much earlier and you could still continue the race. But in that case, some "negative" points would be added. Or... you would just not gain all points... etc... but still be in goal. A careful and thoughtful calculation formula should be made...
This would help us, to avoid dangerous areas, that was not predicted, or conditions changed to dangerous for the certain TP....etc...
Maybe new pool should be done for this.