- Start cylinder (SSS)
- The circle around the start turnpoint. The race clock begins when you cross it in the required direction, or at the start gate you took.
- Speed section
- The timed part of the task: from the start to the end of the speed section. Time points are earned here, and only here.
- End of speed section (ESS)
- Where the clock stops — usually a cylinder shortly before goal, so pilots are not racing all the way to the ground.
- Optimized task line
- The shortest legal way around the turnpoints, clipping each cylinder rather than flying to its centre. Every distance on this page is measured along it.
- Made good
- How far along that line you got — not how far you flew. Wandering off course adds kilometres to your track but none to your distance made good.
- Minimum distance
- A floor: a pilot who flies less than this is scored as if they flew it, so a short flight is never worth less than nothing.
- Nominal distance / time / goal / launch
- What the organiser expected of a good day — a typical task length, duration, share of pilots in goal, and share of pilots launching. They are the yardsticks the day is measured against, not targets anyone must hit.
- Validity
- How much of a full 1000-point day this task was worth. A day where few launched, nobody got far, or the winner was round very quickly counts for less in the competition total.
- Goal ratio
- The share of flying pilots who made goal. It decides how the day's points are split between distance and the other components.
- Leading coefficient
- A measure of how much of the race you spent out in front, as an area under your distance-over-time curve. Lower is better; the absolute number means nothing on its own, only the comparison does.
- Distance difficulty
- Hang gliding only: half the distance points are weighted by where the field landed out, so getting past a stretch that stopped many pilots is worth more than easy kilometres.
- Jump the gun
- Starting before the first start gate opened. Paraglider pilots are scored only to the start cylinder; hang glider pilots take a penalty that grows with how early they were.
The full guide to GAP scoring