Metric details

Measured in kilometres per hour · no expected direction

What the air did, read from the field itself. We estimate the wind from the circling of every pilot. The first method is the drift of the circle centre, and the second method, used when the first is not available, is the modulation of the ground speed. We then combine the estimates two ways. The table by hour of day shows how the wind increased and changed direction through the day. The table by speed-section leg shows the wind on each part of the course. This metric describes the day, so it has no value for each pilot.

Measured in metres per second · no expected direction

When the day started, reached its peak, and ended. We group the thermal climbs of all pilots by the hour in which each climb started, labelled in the time zone of the competition. The median and the 90th-percentile average climb rate for each hour show how the lift developed. The first row is the whole task, measured over every climb of the day in one set, and not as an average of the hourly rows. This metric describes the day, so it has no value for each pilot.

Measured in percent · no expected direction

How much of the flight was in air worth being in. The value is the share of the airborne time of a pilot, on the shared grid, with a 30 s-smoothed vario at or above −0.5 m/s. The time they flew, the line they steered and the way the flight ended all feed this value. It is therefore a reading of the day as much as of the pilot. There is no expected direction, and the sign of the correlation is the finding. The timing table compares the window of the day’s best climbs against the time when the field launched.

Measured in percent · no expected direction

Does the pilot climb to the top of every thermal, or leave with lift still above them? We take the altitude where they left each thermal after the start, as a percentage of the day’s working band. 0% is the floor of the field and 100% is its ceiling. The value is the median. There is no expected direction: a climb to the top buys height in reserve, and an early departure buys time.

Measured in ratio · no expected direction

Whether the pilot flies clean, repeatable circles, or moves around the thermal. We fit each detected circle by least squares. The RMS fit error divided by the fitted radius measures how round the turn was. The value is the median over all of the circles of the pilot. A lower value means smoother and more consistent turns. There is no expected direction: a rough trace can be a pilot chasing a drifting or broken core rather than a pilot circling badly.

Measured in percent · lower is better

Time that goes into neither a climb nor progress down the course. This is the time spent to find lift, to stay up, and to decide what to do next. The value is the share of the speed-section time, from the start to ESS or to the landing, in which the pilot neither climbed in a thermal nor glided with real net speed. A lower value means less time lost between climbs.

Measured in percent · no expected direction

Whether the pilot raced with other pilots or alone. The value is the share of their flying time after the start inside a detected gaggle, that is, clustered with one other racing pilot or more on the shared time grid. There is no expected direction. A gaggle increases the power to search for lift, but it also holds a pilot to its own speed. The sign of the correlation says which of the two occurred here.

Measured in seconds · lower is better

Every second between the opening of the gate and the crossing of the start line is a second lost for nothing. The value is the seconds from the start gate taken to the scored SSS crossing. On an elapsed-time task, the pilot’s own crossing is the reference, so the delay is 0 by definition. The start table adds the crossing altitude, and the distance behind the leading pilot who had already started.

Measured in minutes · lower is better

At each speed-section turnpoint, we compare the elapsed race time of the pilot, which is the reaching time minus their own start, with the fastest pilot to that turnpoint. The value is the minutes behind at ESS. It follows the final rank almost exactly, because this metric is the sanity check of the evaluation.