Discussion about DNF points…
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- This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 16 years ago by Oyvind Ellefsen.
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March 5, 2008 at 4:50 pm #11Oyvind EllefsenParticipant
<p>May be better to discuss in the forum;</p>
<p>From <a href="http://fs.fai.org/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi/ticket/58"> Ticket 58;</a> </p>
<p>When being on launch and deciding not to fly due to conditions being not suited for the pilot’s skill level, the pilot would, as it is now, get DNF and 0 points.</p>
<p>Better would be to give the pilot bombout points. This would be more in the spirit of why one has the bombout points in the first place.</p>
<p>DNF should still cause launch validity to be reduces.<br />
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Delete (in reply to: ↑ description ) 2008-03-05 16:19:40 changed by anonymous ¶</p>
<p>The whole deal on a flying competition is to score the "flights" of the pilots, not the decisions that they make prior to the actual flight. If you give bombout points to a pilot that decides not to take off is the same as scoring for not flying at all, and it will put the non flying pilot in the same place than of those pilots that actually took their chances and went aloft trying to leave the bombout zone, but couldn´t.</p>
<p>I think that it´s important to keep this difference in order to keep the competition spirit.</p>
<p>If you decided not to fly on any of the competition days, and another pilot bombs out everyday, it´s not fair that they score the same.</p>
<p>Replying to ste:</p>
<p> When being on launch and deciding not to fly due to conditions being not suited for the pilot’s skill level, the pilot would, as it is now, get DNF and 0 points. Better would be to give the pilot bombout points. This would be more in the spirit of why one has the bombout points in the first place. DNF should still cause launch validity to be reduces.</p>
<p>Delete 2008-03-05 16:34:17 changed by danielvelez ¶</p>
<p>Actually the DNF score is supposed to be handled by the gap scorying formula and it´s not a bug or an issue on the software. If you are willing to change the way the non flying pilots are scoring then you should suggest a different scoring formula than the GAP, or suggest a new variation for the GAP formula, but still you should keep into consideration that there are still some competitions that would like that the non flying pilots don´t get scored as if they flew.<br />
Delete 2008-03-05 17:46:02 changed by oyvellef ¶</p>
<p>I agree that changing the DNF scoring is a major change, and should at least be an option in the scoring.</p>
<p>Giving points for not flying will influence the decision making of the pilots on marginal or borderline days. It opens up for manipulation when pilots will not be "forced" to fly for DNF points on marginal days, as pilots will not even try to fly.
</p>March 10, 2008 at 6:55 pm #183steMemberIt would be part of a scoring formula, and as such the existing GAP scoring formulas (GAP2007, GAP2000/2002 & OzGAP2005) will not be changed.
It may be a part of GAP2008 which will appear in FS 1.2. If so it might be as an option to select.The way GAP is intended to work:
A pilot choosing not to take off for any reason other than safety should be listed as ABS (absent) which will not have any effect on the launch validity.
A pilot choosing not to take off for safety reason should be listed as DNF and this should reduce the launch validity.The idea that a pilot don’t have to actually take off in order to get min. distance comes from Australia. It has been used a few times with competitions in Manilla and is now also in item 5.2 in the Australian rulebook:
“5.2 DNF- Did Not Fly: Pilots that do not launch due to safety concerns will be scored DNF, and they will be scored negative penalty points equivalent to the bombout score on the day. By default, the RACE scoring program scores DNF as zero, and the day is devalued.”I quite like this. The idea of the min. distance points is to stop pilots from trying to extend their distance when it is obvious they’re not getting anyhwere. So by giving min. distance also to those not jumping of launch for safety reasons, one avoid pushing pilots of launch.
Stein-Tore
March 11, 2008 at 10:28 am #184Oyvind EllefsenParticipantAs long as it is an option I think it’s not problem.
The issue I see is that DNF applies not only to safety, pilots have more reasons to not take off…
I have experienced quite a few competitions in seemingly slow conditions, where pilots think it’s not soarable, and only take off to get min distance points, only to find that it was soarable and possible to fly some of the task. I fear giving DNF to these “launch potatoes” will take away the incentive to fly on “slow” days.
– Oyvind
March 28, 2008 at 12:03 am #191danielvelezParticipantI insist: It´s important to keep the difference between the score of a flying pilot with the score of a non flying pilot, whatever the reason was for not flying.
The min distance points have two main reasons for being there: The main reason is to score pilots that actually take off, and the second is to score them equally if they are within the glide path radio from take off.
So the main reason for min distance points isn´t for trying to stop pilots that are not getting anyway, as the effect is quite different, as it makes pilots try to fly a little futher than minimum distance in order to score different and better than all the other pilots that bombed out.
The idea is that if you couldn´t at least escape the glide path cone, then you shouldn´t score different than other pilots that flew a little less distance because of their glide radio.
This is why on the old GAP parameter settings instructions, the programmers sugested to use a 10:1 or 15:1 path to determine the minimum distance.
Probably STE is mistaking the distance distribution that GAP uses, that as the main purpose tryies to discourage pilots to fly a few meters more than a bunch of landed pilots, as his score wont be improoved that much, but I´m pretty sure that the minimum distance doesn´t produce the effect of keeping the pilots on one place, unless the minimum distance is a lot higher than the glide radio from take off.
Usually the Miminum distance would be between 8-12 km on a hang gliding meet, as it´s quite rare to find a take off that´s 1000 mts above ground.
I´ve been flying on some hang gliding championships, including 4 worlds, and I also have been serving as Director of a few Colombian Paragliding Championships, including the pre PWC. I´ve found that the paraglider pilots have a tendency of playing with the rules to get scored or to devaluate the day quite more than the hangglider pilots, and this comes to a sad situation where at some point the pilots try to devaluate the day not taking off (DNF)in order to win a meet on the last day even without flying. If you also give points to those pilots, then the whole scoring could start reflecting more an strategic game than the pilot´s flying skills.
On our local site we have a “take off” issue, as the take off window is quite small because of the tail wind, so we need to have an special rule of safety/fairness/validity: If we don´t get enougth safety takeoff conditions to give at least 30 seconds of takeoff time to each pilot on the competition, then the whole day is cancelled. No launch validity, as it´s not a pilot decision what grounds the pilot but a safety committe decision. Nevertheless, it´s quite common that the first 15 minutes of sustained takeoff window, all the pilots decide not to takeoff as the conditions are quite marginal. Still the time counts up and if at the end 30 pilots did not take off because the takeoff window closed, the task is not cancelled because they had time to takeoff at the beginning, but their own decision kept them grounded. This way all the other gap parameters to determine the day validiy starts to work and those grounded pilots would get DNF, thus 0 points. So if you decided to takeoff early and bombed out, you get scored better than those pilots that for their own decision (not taking off early waiting for an ideal momment) couldn´t takeoff at all because of the tailwind.
Now I´m a little lost and I´m not sure exactly what are we talking about… sorry…
March 30, 2008 at 9:16 pm #193Oyvind EllefsenParticipantI agree it should not be set in the software permanently, but if it is an option in the scoring formula, that can be checked off I have no problems with it. I will just never enable that option.
In my experience the DNF is being played with in Hanggliding too, I remember the the Worlds in Algodonales 2001 where most of us did not want to fly because of strong winds, but some pilots did not agree with the rebellion and flew the task anyway. That did not matter because all DNF’s devalued the day to 2% or something like that.
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