ORIGINAL: John Murdoch
This is really an interesting discussion. There's another item that seems to be apparent here too. If an obvious zero occurs, whether mechanical or hard, you can still get points for actually completing the zeroed manuver where the judges can easily identify the zero. If ya blow it, blow it where the judges can see it and at least score something..
Huh?? I think you have missed something. The Airspace score is not meant to be a figure by figure score, so getting a hard zero on a figure has no effect on that (airspace) score. This is the danger here. Many judges are going to place the pilots in double jeopardy in trying to use some sort of figure by figure criteria for this new score. This is one place where the judge is not only free, but encouraged, to impression score. It's a 6 because, well, it just looked like a 6 to me. This score is all about how tight you can fly your sequence balanced off against keeping things so the judges can see them. The whole ides is to try to reduce sequence footprint. SO this should be the over riding thing in a judges mind for this score. Overall, how tight was the sequence flown?? It has nothing to do with individual figures per se and it is a mistake to start to develop criteria based on that type of thinking.
This is why Dean's 1 point per "properly placed figure" is not a good idea in my mind. It is missing the forest for the trees. This new score is ALL about the forest and NOT at all about the trees. As stupid as it sounds, I think you will know a 10 when you see it, as well as a zero. It is the in between that will be hard to know, and that is why I opposed the incremental scores. 0-5-10 is easy to do and is consistent with the objective of the rule. That objective is to try to coerce pilots to fly tighter, smaller sequences and THAT is what a judge should be focused on.
Reward the pilot who flies it tight, punish the pilot who is all over the sky (and over the horizon).