Present Day
Modern gliding competitions now comprise closed tasks where everyone races on an aerial route around specified turn-points, plus start and finish points, that brings everybody back to base. The weather forecast and the performance of the gliders, as well as the experience level of the pilots, dictate the length of the task. Today, most of the points are speed points. Nowadays, the rule is to set the task so that all pilots have a fair chance of completing it.
With the advent of GPS, new types of tasks were introduced such as speed or distance tasks within assigned areas, and speed or distance tasks with pilot-selected turn-points. Despite the use of pilot-selected turn-points made possible by GPS, tasks over a fixed course are still used frequently. In the European Gliding Championships in 2005, a task of 1,011 km was set in the open class; the longest task in an international competition.
The FAI Sporting Code for gliders sets out the rules and procedures to be used to verify soaring performances in competitions and badge flights. The main objective of these rules is to ensure that a consistent level of proof is achieved for all flights.
Read more about this topic: Gliding Competitions
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The ladies understood each other, in the careful way that ladies do once they understand each other. They were rather a pair than a couple, supporting each other from day to day, rather a set of utile, if ill-matched, bookends between which stood the opinion and idea in the metaphorical volumes that both connected them and kept them apart.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)