Pattern Fun / scribe / Judging

[Mark Wendt]

Larry,

         I'm with you 100%.  Two wrongs don't make a right.  Like you I 
wasn't there, and I'm sure there were circumstances involved we know 
nothing about.  And not knowing what class the pilot was flying, he may 
have been up to his neck in alligators if he was in one of the lower 
classes, and the additional pressure and strain introduced by the judge was 
unnecessary.  The pilot was no longer concentrating solely on the flight, 
which can cause safety of flight issues.  At a busy contest, with two 
lines, this can cause real problems.

         I think the issues leading up to the confrontation should be 
handled at the pilots meeting, before any fuel is pumped, and laid to rest 
there.  The issue of the pilot/caller needing or not needing to call the 
maneuver to the judge should be gone over before the contest gets under 
way, so that everyone is singing from the same sheet of music.

         And hard feelings generated by an incident such as this can have 
some big repercussions.  The other pilots, seeing this display may think, 
well if this contest has judges like this, I'm not going to come back.  Or, 
on the other hand, if the judges see shouting back and forth between pilot 
and judge, and the CD lets them get away with it, they may not come back 
and judge.  It's a two-edged sword.  Hopefully, the CD handled this 
situation in a dignified and diplomatic way, the contest got back under 
way, and there were no hard feelings after the fact.

Mark


At 11:26 AM 9/22/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Mark,
>
>I agree with you that it's was unprofessional for the judge to act in the
>manner described. However, two wrongs don't make it right. More often than
>not, the second foul draws the flag or penalty.
>
>There are probably a number of different ways for the CD to handle this and
>perhaps the CD did handle it well. None the less, a yelling match should
>never happen during a contest. The pilot should not have engaged the judge
>even if the judge was unfair. The pilot should have plead the case to the CD
>after the flight. A number of possible remedies could have been made by the
>CD which could have been  to allow the pilot to scrub that flight and make
>it up at the end of the round; or, scrub the round, replace the judge and
>redo the round.
>
>I would hope, and state during a pilot meeting if I was a CD, that a judge
>and/or pilot give me the opportunity to resolve a problem instead of taking
>it into there own hands. In the situation described I'm certain that it
>removed an element of fun and camaraderie for a period of time or for the
>whole event for that matter. The situation wasn't fair to the majority of
>participants and the CD, setting aside the judge and the pilot involved.
>
>I wasn't there and I'm sure there are two sides to the story, so I can't say
>how I would have handled it. However, based on what I understand for the big
>picture the pilot should have been held accountable to the rule book. The
>level of accountability is very subjective and depends on the severity of
>the conflict. To your point, perhaps the judge should have been held
>accountable as well. Perhaps they both were...
>
>Larry

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