Changes

This is normally held annually, either at [[Gransden Lodge]] or OUGC's home airfield at RAF [[Bicester]]/RAF [[Weston-on-the-Green]], and is the traditional opportunity for us to show our skills against "the other place".

The rules are simple: teams of 5 6 attempt to soar locally for up to 50 minutes, gaining one point per minute, climbing for 2 points per 100 ft, and then to land before the 50 minutes are up as there is then a deduction of 6 points per minute. Flights which receive no points for time are not allowed to claim height gains.

Women on the Varsity team can get a half-blue if they already have perfomed are holding a 1 hour solo flightBGA Bronze certificate. Men can also get a half-blue from if they are holding a BGA Silver certificate, or if they are holding a BGA Bronze certificate and fly the Women's Blues Committee (subject to approval from MBC)highest-scoring soaring flight on any given day.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

| 2023 Jul || Gransden Lodge || Oxford 753 Cambridge 612|-| 2022 Jun || RAF Weston-on-the-Green || Cambridge 584 Oxford 302|-| 2021 Jun || Gransden Lodge || Cambridge 333 Oxford 279|-| 2020 || colspan="2" | ''— Cancelled due to Covid-19 —''|-| 2019 Jun || RAF Bicester ||???

| 1996 || colspan="2" | ''— Cancelled—''

=== Normal rules General Rules ===

# A point is awarded for each minute of flight up to 50 mins<ol><li value="1">The competition shall span three days (forming a three-day "window"), after which six points will be deducted for where each minute over. The lowest score which can day may or may not be recorded is 0 pointsvalid as "competing days". Two points are awarded for each 100 feet </li><li value="2">Before the start of the competition, both team captains shall agree on the full set of height gained after rules, including the launch provided scoring metrics and normalization method to be used, as well as the climb is maintained for 500 feet. Climbs less than 500 feet do not gain height pointsaddition/removal of clauses to/from this article.</li># <li value="3">The number of pilots in each team should shall not exceed six , and the team members must shall be decided before the start of the competition. Provisional teams should be declared at least one week in advance.</li><ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha"><li value="a">''As agreed at the 2023 Varsity Match.'' If it is not possible for all team members to be present across the full three-day window, then - on mutual approval from both team captains - team members may be decided day-by-day, before the first flight of each day, such that both teams have the same size on each day.</li></ol><br><li value="4">At the beginning of each day of the three-day window, before the first flight, both team captains shall agree on the validity of the day as a "competing day", as well as the scoring metric to be used for the day. This agreement shall not be rescinded, barring clause 4.b, or other exceptional circumstances.</li><ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha"><li value="a">All flights made during competing days are potentially valid scoring flights, unless they are unsafe.</li># <li value="b">Each pilot can may enter only one scoring flight for each competing day of the competition. A day should be declared void if it is not possible for at least three members of each team to flyattempt scoring flights.</li># <ol style="list-style-type:lower-roman"><li value="i">Disqualified flights, and flights scoring zero points, are still considered attempted scoring flights.</li></ol><br><li value="c">Teams must record on their own logs the takeoff and landing time for each scoring flight made by a member of their own team. Failure to do so renders a flight invalid. An observer from each team shall be present at the launch point launchpoint during all flights.</li># A [[GPS trace|barograph trace]] must be submitted for a flight to be awarded height gain points. If this <li value="d">It is typical, though not available necessary, that only time points will be awarded for the flight. It is the responsibility four best scoring flights of each team to make sure a working barograph is carried in are taken on each scoring glidercompeting day.</li># Instructors may fly in <li value="e">Unsafe flights are disqualified from scoring gliders and may verbally assist the competitor. They may Unsafe flights include, but are not physically fly the glider at any time. The only exception limited to this is to maintain normal safety, flights which enter airspace, land out, make a final turn below 300ft QFE, exceed Va (max maneuvering speed), or generally show poor airmanship.</li># All flights made during the days of the competitions are potentially valid scoring flights. At the end of </ol><br><li value="5">The scores for each competing dayshall be normalized, teams will submit so that the takeoff/landing times and trace for the best flight made by median score on each team membercompeting day is 100.</li># All flights must follow airspace rules and show good airmanship. Flights entering airspace will be disqualified.# <li value="6">At the end of the competition, the normalized points for all scoring flights will shall be totalled , and the team with the most points will shall be declared the winner.</li></ol><br>

=== Bad weather Scoring Metric for Soaring Flights ("Normal rules ") ===

# <ol><li value="1">Every 1 minute over 5 minutes is counted as one point, each pilot submits the best flight of the day.</li># Scores for each university are aggregated, the university with the highest score wins.# <li value="2">Instructors may fly in scoring gliders and may verbally assist the competitor. They may not physically fly the glider at any time. The only exception to this is to maintain normal safety.</li></ol><br> == Past reports == === 2019 === Report by Charlie Brooker. ==== Day 1 ==== Scrub! Despite getting up very early, the decision was made to scrub Tuesday due to low cloud. CUGC instead watched a brief display of old cars on site at Bicester and played card games. ==== Day 2 ==== [[File:Varsity2019Day2.jpg|thumb|right|The team on Day 2.]] Despite a poor start to the morning with solid cloud at 900ft and broken at 600ft, the weather improved over lunch. While the weather wasn’t kind enough to gift us with thermals for our standard height-gain competition rules, the cloud did lift enough for the bad weather rules: spot landings!  The rules for this event were decided upon beforehand as follows: A marker would be set up on the ground, visible to all pilots approaching for landing. The pilot would then have to touch down and roll to a stop as close to the line as possible. Wheel brake was strictly forbidden; all flights were taken in two-seaters and an instructor would be sat in the back of each flight to verify the lack of wheel brake. The distance between the glider’s main wheel and the marker would then be measured in Chris’ feet (Chris-ft). This distance was then added to 30 then 3000 would be divided by this result to give the score (i.e. with a distance, d, the score = 3000/(30+d) ), thereby giving a higher score for those who land closer to the marker. There was time for each team to attempt their first two spot landings on Wednesday afternoon, leaving Cambridge with a score of 86 and Oxford with 68.# Flights ==== Day 3 ==== [[File:Varsity2019Day3.jpg|thumb|right|Both teams on Day 3.]] Thursday saw a markedly warmer weather; perfect for the beach but still no soaring to start with. So, it was agreed that the first round of spot landings would be completed, by which time some soaring may be possible. Cambridge scored a decisive lead in the spot landings, with CUGC flights from Hugh and Bonan both scoring above 60 points.  As hoped, the sun came out and thermals began just before lunch! OUGC’s Chia-Man getting a 32-minute duration flight to give Oxford a clear soaring lead to begin with. The conditions were tricky; making one wrong decision left you low, scratching for height-gains and looking to land. OUGC scored very highly after lunch as well managing two 35-point soaring flights from Philipp and Arthur. CUGC’s best soaring flight was Timo’s 21 minutes. Once the thermals had stopped and the hangar had been packed, the task of tabulating the scores and discovering the winner began.  Warning: boring technical details in this paragraph… To enable easier comparison between the scores for spot-landings and the scores for the soaring flights, both sets of scores were scaled and translated individually. This was done in such a way that the mean for the spot landings was 100 and the standard deviation was 15; the same was true of the set of soaring flight scores. This meant that the scores for each team could then be summed to give the total scores. Also, since Oxford’s sixth team member was unable to come to Varsity, Cambridge selected their five best soaring flights and their five best spot landings. ==== Summary ==== After significant calculations, the final turn below 300ft will not scorewas: '''Oxford 1009 – 990 Cambridge''', nor will land out flightsa win for Oxford. CUGC would like to send a big “Thank you!” to OUGC and Bicester Gliding Club for hosting us; the clubhouse is very nice and the airfield seems to have an unlimited number of landing areas! We look forward to hosting OUGC at Gransden in summer 2020.

{| class= Past reports "wikitable"! Team !! Pilot !! Normalised Spot Landing !! Normalised Soaring !! Total|-! scope="row" rowspan="6" | Cambridge| Charlie Brooker| 111.1| -| rowspan="6" | 990|-| Bonan Zhu| 113.2| 89.3|-| Chris Barrott| 111.1| 84.0|-| Timo Wilken| -| 102.7|-| Hugh Hudson| 112.6| 96.0|-| Hayk Saribekyan| 83.9| 86.6|--! scope="row" rowspan="5" | Oxford| Chia Man| 85.9| 117.4| rowspan="5" | 1009|-| Philipp| 92.1| 121.4|-| Francesca| 107.1| 96.0|-| Arthur| 110.6| 121.4|-| Antoine| 72.4| 85.3|}

=== 2018 ===

==== Day 1 ====

Day 1 was weakly soarable, but we made the most of the day with both teams completing check flights and getting some practice in. Thursday andFriday were forecast to be big days so we werelooking forward to the two day match. TheVarsity match task is simple: points are earned foreach 100ft of height gained within 50 minutes,with points also being awarded for time up to 50minutes. However, points are taken away after 50minutes so it is important to judge your flight timewell.

==== Day 2 ====

The conditions on the second day were perfectlysuited for the first scoring day. The match beganat noon, with an Oxford pilot launching first.CUGC’s president Chris Barrott launched soonafter, completing what turned out to be the secondhighest scoring flight of the day in the [[Junior]],earning CUGC 280 points. He managed to makethe most of the strong conditions and achievedover 10,000ft of height gain. The next Cambridgepilot to launch was Tomasz Cebo, who completedan hour-long flight in the [[:Category:CU|ASW19b]]. Just like theyear before, he forgot about the 50-minute flighttime limit – however he managed to find thermalstowards the end of his flight that were so strongthat this didn’t turn out to be a disadvantage,earning him a score of 238. Next in line wasCambridge’s captain Nat West. Launching in the[[K21]], he didn’t have as much luck finding strongthermals, achieving a score of 147 during a 49-minute flight. An hour later, Tomasz Ceboattempted a second flight and managed to improveupon his previous flight with a score of 255, thistime adhering to the 50-minute flight limit. HughHudson completed the last scoring flight of theday for Cambridge in the K21, achieving 209points.

Oxford put up a strong performance on the firstscoring day. Artur Doshchyn achieved 323 points,by far the highest score of the day. After thesecond day, Oxford was leading the match with432 normalised points vs Cambridge’s Cambridge's 384.

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 ==== Day 3 ====

The conditions were mostly blue and provided amore challenging day – a chance for a Cambridgecomeback, perhaps.A small grid formed at the end of runway 04 andlaunching started at about 11:30. The matchstarted at shortly after noon with the Oxford K21taking the first launch again. Cambridge pilotBonan Zhu launched right after in the ASW19b.He managed to connect with a thermal at 800ft andthen climbed to 3000ft. Despite the sky beingblue, he found an energy line near the airfield androde along it. A flight duration of 49 minutes wasachieved, gaining Cambridge 177 points. Thesecond Cambridge pilot was Hugh Hudson. Hescored 164 points in his flight with fourrespectable climbs in a K21. In the meantime,Tomasz Cebo was flying in the ASW19b and heachieved the highest score of the day in his thirdflight, 237, in six climbs. Afterwards TimoWilken performed the fourth scoring flight of theday. He achieved a respectable score of 156 withtwo long climbs. The conditions started todeteriorate around 15:30 with increasing difficultyto connect with thermals off the winch. DanielMorales Valdivia was the fifth pilot to attempt ascore. He took off in the [[Perkoz|SZD-50-3]] with safetyinstructor Peter Warner at 1509 but had to landshortly after. At this point the thermals hadbecome too weak, yet he still managed to achievea respectable score of 55 given the conditions. Wewould also like to thank Cambridge pilot Stepan Chrz who acted as launch marshal to ensureefficient operation for both teams and kept thelogs up to date.In the meantime, Oxford achieved a score of 190and 184 in their first two flights but then struggledto get away for the third one. Two more successfulscoring flights of 50-minute duration wereachieved later in the day, despite weak conditions.Due to the fantastic performance of Cambridge’spilots on the second scoring day, Cambridge madeup for day one and won the Varsity match with ascore of '''814 vs Oxford’s 802'''!

=== 2016 ===

 === 2014 ===

=== 2013 ===

==== Day 1 &ndash; Saturday 31st August ====

==== Day 2 &ndash; Sunday 1st September ====

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