Wrong Maneuver issues

[WHIP23 at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/12/03 8:22:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
Eric.Henderson at gartner.com writes:

So less take these one at a time again!

> 
> So what are we fixing? Scribes????

Yes!

>   
> The big picture is that you must never lose sight of the pilot "experience" 
> at a contest. If you make this a bad one they go away. If you lose pilots, 
> the callers and scribes and judges don't have a job!

I'm not convinced that the simple request for the caller to speak loud enough 
for the judges to hear the maneuver description will cause the pilot to have 
a bad experience.  And if you make things hard enough on the judges and CD's 
you won't have any contests, what kind of experience will that create.  The 
fact of the matter is that this one, simple, act reduces the manpower 
requirements to run a contest significantly.  Heck I wish I could have 10 trained judges 
and 10 trained scribes and room to separate them from the pilot location and 
and and, but that aint reality.  Reality is that, in most cases, the pilot has 
a caller, who is describing each maneuver, in some reasonable manner and all 
he need to is speak a little louder and the need for scribes is pretty much 
eliminated, at a minimum you reduce the need to someone who can write down a 
series of numbers.  

>   
> Getting the caller to call out the maneuvers for the judges is interfering 
> with the pilot caller relationship. Just swaying "it works down here" is not 
> asking the pilot group if they like it. As pilots you are put in a situation 
> where you object at your peril. Implied or real it's the same thing and that 
> is bad for the sport.

I don't agree here, I think it probably makes the caller more important and 
will improve the pilot caller relationship.  Personally when I call I take it 
very serious and view how I describe and present the maneuvers as important and 
when I select a caller I consider the same things.  I would NEVER willingly 
leave this to strangers or unknown skill or experience.  I know, I know, there 
are situations where the pilot and judges are separated and in those cases I 
have no choice and when that is the case I'll shut up and step to the line and 
fly, but I personally would view this as a handicap/potential problem.

>   
> A judge was removed at the Nat's for demanding that the pilot helper call 
> out the maneuvers.

Not all decisions are correct, even at the NATs, I wasn't there, don't know 
how the flight stations vs judges stations were laid out etc, so it may well 
not have been appropriate.  Remember I've never proposed it for all situations.  

> 
>  
> I'd love to see how we would handle a Spanish or French speaking caller and 
> their pilots.

When and if it occurs I'll deal with it, hasn't happened yet, but I have had 
contests held up, many times, because there was not enough manpower to provide 
judges and callers.


>   
> Fix the scribe problem first and stop messing up the pilot experience

What is the pilot experience of having the scribe call the wrong maneuver or 
having the contest held up while searching for manpower?  I suspect that if a 
pilot lets this ruin his experience then he will find something else to ruin 
it, if this is removed.  All we are doing is asking the caller to speak loud 
enough for two other people, sitting pretty close, to hear.  I'm not asking for 
a change in the description, not asking for a change in when the maneuver is 
called, etc.  I guess it would mean that "cute" little things like calling 
something a "train wreck" would be out, but I wouldn't want any of my maneuvers 
described as a train wreck anyway :-)  

 
 Don't forget that a CD is a rep of the AMA and I quote, has a high level of 
> responsibility of "properly applying the rules,maintaining fairness etc." . 
> I think that making the callers do this would be seen as unfair. IMHO.

I'm not sure where I stand on this one, because I don't know that the "rule 
book" speaks to this issue.  It just seems too me to be an easy way to reduce 
the manpower requirements to run a contest.   

>   
> There is a full blown appeal process to the AMA if you feel unfairly 
> treated. I could see that the traffic in this area could get pretty busy.
>   
> Regards,
>  
> Eric.
> 

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