m) In any contest, no judge shall be scheduled to judge more than 50 contest flights or perform a total of more than 10 hours of judging duty (whichever is the longer) within any single contest day. This time shall include the above judges’ calibration flight(s) but does not include the breaks.
Peter
Both of those are abusive, if adhered to - but, if the limit is 50, why were there 60, as Keith notes? Note also Jose's point, where the judges said they couldn't go on, or that they were fatigued to the point of "all looking the same", which is what I had exactly what I was having trouble with after I did something like 55 on several occasions, and I assure you the problem was evident long before the last few flights.
To avoid this issue, you need to keep the length of a round (defined for these purposes as a discrete group whose scores are only compared to others in the group) to something less that 4 hours, and preferably around 3. If you adhere to the fixed 10-minutes slots, that's *18* flights - rather than 50ish. But, you shouldn't adhere to the 10 minutes fixed slots, either. Most fliers at this level will not need the 10 minutes, let them go as fast as they can manage it. Leave them the full working time if necessary, but discourage "tactical" use of the time, if they are not having a problem, they should be expected to go as soon as the previous pilot leaves, or move their airplane on while the previous flier is moving off. At our NATs, even with the 8-minute flight time, we have sometimes gone at fast at 7:30 a flight with the most experienced competitors, for several hours. 3 hours, that's 24 flights. Or roughly 1/4 a typical WC field.
We manage this year after year, everyone cooperates because they have all judged themselves and they know that it is in the interest of the judges, and in their own interest, to keep the line moving. Anybody plays games, they get the message *very quickly*, and only in egregious cases does the allowed working time (which is about 11 minutes in AMA) even considered and very rarely is someone informed they are "on the clock".
Curiously, the 1/4 just keeps coming up in this discussion - we are set to accommodate about 100 people, any more, and we start having issues. It means you need *4* groups/circles, not just 2, unless you want to spread out the qualifying over 4 days instead of 2. I note that while spreading it out is always dismissed because it "takes too long" - but apparently there is usually plenty of time to do an entire World Cup ahead of time at the same site with the same people.
We do 2 circles at our Team Trials, just exactly like the WC - except the most I can ever recall is about 20 entrants, not 100.
That, Peter, is what the FAI brain trust has steadfastly disregarded with regard to this issue. 2 circles is better than one in only one regard - the round only goes for one day, so you only get the ballooning and weather variation associated with 8-10 hours, not *36*. We manage to come up with the necessary resources every year. Warren and Shareen had agreement for more than a year to do exactly the same thing at the 2004 WC - which was torpedoed by the usual FAI "forces unknown" a few months before the contest. Nous ne pouvons pas laisser les Américains simplistes et arriérés nous montrer, n'est-ce pas?
We made this argument long ago when Igor was running the message board, very carefully with examples, analysis, etc. As soon as it was noted that we had been *doing it for 40 years* at the NATs, then, people crawled out of the woodwork to come up with objections. The resulting *compromise* is what we wound up with, and ended up with the situation Keith and Jose described above.
It also tends to explain why the WC judging has tended, over many decades, to home in on one aspect of a flight (formerly 5' bottoms, and now tight corner) and arguably not give an assessment of a variety of factors. When you are tired, your tendency is to to try to keep your focus on *something*, and because you are tired it cannot be *everything*.
This is a clear example of how best practices are not even seriously considered and certainly there seems to be no movement to analyze the problems we find WC after WC and solve them. Every year, we examine what we are doing and make changes that seem to drive the situation to a more fair and equitable result and a more even chance for everyone involved. I don't see anything like that happening in the FAI - in fact, we had a series of suggested changes like getting rid of half the maneuvers in order to make it, er, something, maybe "spectator-friendly" that everyone across the world disagreed with, a majority opinion to include appearance point to keep it from turning into a purely buy-and-fly operation (that, as a completely unexpected side effect, making the commercial exploitation of the event by a few chosen manufacturers less likely and less lucrative) that was again torpedo by the mysterious forces unknown.
This is why Bill was upset the other day and this is why Derek and I finally got fed up with it about a year ago. Just to my pserspective, I don't see the FAI (as a group) making the sorts of assessments and changes to practices or rules that are geared to improve the fairness or accuracy that we do on a regular basis. Again, if it was *just* the international stunt fliers, we wouldn't have a problem, if it was just the F2B working group, we wouldn't have a problem. But as is abundantly clear from both the results of the "proposals" - which are at best *merely suggestions to be reworked by the same "forces unknown" with unknown qualifications or motivations*, and the actuality (Serge's comment about "taking the checks and putting "F2B Circle" on a picture of a potato field", to paraphrase), and again, driving the judges far beyond their capability to maintain a ridiculous "compromise" situation intended to ensure that it will always be possible to have it in a days driving distance of Western Europe.
We know EXACTLY HOW TO DEAL WITH ALL THESE PROBLEMS, but to do so, we need to make changes to FAI processes. They are time-proven in real contests for decades, it's not an experiment and it addresses exactly the problems we have had for years. These changes do not selectively benefit *anyone* or *any group*, in fact, they benefit everyone by *making the contest more fair* and *leveling the playing field for all competitors*. And incidentally, not killing the most important people involved in operating it.
I think the resistance to this effort, on the other hand, seems largely about people in Western Europe trying to ensure that they maintain control over *their* organization. In the USA, we call this "The Good Ole Boy network" and it is the chief point of controversy we have had over the years, the end goal being to root out and remove anything like it. I see no movement on this front, far from it, it is maintained at the expense of everything else.
Brett