Projected distribution of the 500 pc sample above the Galactic plane. Left panel: 500 pc sample is projected onto the R-|Z| plane with the different classes of hot subdwarfs colour-coded accordingly. The black dashed line indicates the 500 pc distance limit, whereas the horizontal grey dashed lines represent a 50 pc binning example for how the sample has been divided up to derive the scale height. Right panel: positional probability density distribution projected onto the ɀ-axis taking the standard parallax errors of Gaia into account – displayed as a stacked histogram.