There was a comment made that "Nobody knows how the F16 DPN were decided" and this is not true. Both Darlene Hobock (Chair of the US PN Committee at the time) and I know because we did it. You have to remember this was at the birth of the Class when the current interest/boats/etc. was a pipe dream. There were only TWO type of cats in the US at the time that could legitimately be considered "F16's" and those were Taipan 4.9's to which spinnakers could/had been added and a lone BIM 16. NOBODY on the planet had any idea, realistically at that time, of how fast these boats were. The boats were new to the US and spinnakers (of the "modern" type- although this was several generations of design ago) were new to the Taipan and the Taipan was new to the US. Australia had the largest and most active fleet of Taipan 4.9's on the planet and I think you could say they had a few "rock stars" sailing them (as sloop and uni only mind you) - Glen Ashby, Greg Goodall, Jim Boyer, to name a few. So we used the Aussie VYC numbers for the Tornado vs the Taipan in sloop and uni configuration (BECAUSE the Aussies had PROVED there was a true performance diferential between these two configurations even when the Taipan uni was "optimal"- ie uni specialized sail and mast, etc.) as a basis to assign "provisional" PN's to the Taipan 4.9. Shortly afterward when we wanted to get an "F16HP" class going (anybody remember those days??) I simply petitioned Darlene and the PN Commitee to apply the standard PN spinnaker modification to the Taipan PN to get a "provisional" number for the F16's. At that early time I was one of the few guys sailing the 4.9 uni (and without a spinnaker prior to the F16 days) but we had Glen Ashby, Greg Goodall and Jim Boyer all sail and race the sloop (no spinnaker) over here and submit those numbers as did Lars Guck back in the early Taipan 4.9 days. Those experiences dropped the DPN 4.9 numbers and hence the F16 numbers (since they were based on the 4.9 numbers) but prior to the Blade there were not very many of us in the US racing F16 so numbers were naturally scattered and few and they were for Taipan 4.9s fitted with spinnakers, NOT fully optimized F16's like the Blade which have a much wider beam, thinner/deeper boards, "latest generation" spinnakers, and optimized mains (vs the original 4.9 "squarehead" that looks like a pinhead next to a new Glaser main!).
SO- Was it our original intent to have a single "F16" DPN? YES, because it was our original intent that the boats be raced uni or double "heads up" as a class.
Did we know if this was realistic? NO, it was our "goal"! Did we have ANY date to support this contention at that time? NO-so the PN Committee did the best they could and assigned 2 numbers. Does it appear we may have met this goal? Perhaps- but again, until a large, comparable "data set" is achieved we won't know. I believe in some of the European "boat parameter" handicapping systems the uni actually rates FASTER, rather than slower, so they actually have the opposite problem there when handicap racing. IMO the important thing is that, AS A CLASS, F16's race "heads up" against each other. By the way, IMO it is the nature of the beast that "Formula" and "development" classes will get faster as more people get involved and drive competition between builders/sailors/sailmakers. Just as the Inter 18 or original configuration Tiger for instance are no competition for the current generation/configuration of F18's.

Respectfully,
Kirt
("The Old US F16 Fart") <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />