New Nats Calendar (2005)

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

I asked a friend about the plans to re-schedule nats.

His reply is below.

							Marty #2874

	Yes, the AMA Nets will be cut back from 6 weeks to 4 weeks beginning in
2005. The problem is more one of not enough weekends to accommodate all of
the requests we have to use the NFS as opposed to "too much time taken away
from tourist pilots". We get several requests each year from organizations
to use the NFS that are denied because there are just no open weekends. The
schedule is booked every single weekend during the flying season.

	I know the Nats Committee is concerned over this but this is what I see.
There are several events run at the Nats that draw only a handful of
competitors. And when I say handful I'm talking, in some cases, less than a
half dozen entrants.  These events schedule one of the flying sites on the
complex for several days, but in reality are only flying for a few hours
each day. The rest of the day the site sits unused. By consolidating some of
these events to take full advantage of the facility we should easily be able
to shorten the time frame of the Nats by two weeks but still run the same
number of events, with the same number of participants, getting the same
number of flights. Nothing should change except to make the site available
to additional flying events. BTW, we also opened two additional control line
circles this year and this needs to be factored into the equation.

	I think the Nats Committee will need to put some effort into coming up with
a workable schedule, but it's not undoable by a long shot. I asked Dave
Brown about the 200 emails. He says "maybe, over the years, he might have
received a couple hundred emails from members complaining about the lack of
access to the site when events are being run. But these complaints were not
only directed at the Nats, but all of the events that are scheduled at the
NFS.
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