Too quiet, one man's opinion (long)

[Anthony Abdullah]

Pattern and audience appeal are not two words that I would ever really put together. For those who know what is involved pattern is beautiful and exciting, but for the sport flyer or casual observer it is a bunch of planes that don't look like real planes doing the same thing over and over. They find that very boring, and the reality is, unless you are competing, pattern is not a very good spectator sport. We just don't have the edge of your seat possibility of carnage that you have in something like pylon racing, or freestyle. I love pattern in it's current form. I am not one of the people that subscribe to the notion that our declining participation numbers are due to it being too hard, having classes named incorrectly, or that the equipment is too expensive. We don't need to go back to non turnaround manuevers, or relax the rules so that anything with wings can compete. I am just as concerned about our dwindling numbers as anyone, but I don't want to try to fix it at the expense
 of pattern itself. To me that is just too high a price to pay. On an individual level we can encourage other pilots that show an interest in pattern (like Mr. Kane did with Andrew), but I'm afraid that we won't ever really have mass appeal. I believe that participation in pattern reflects a nationwide trend as to how things are changing. We are the old kit manufacturer with the best laser cut parts, highest quality wood, excellent design and engineering, and full size plans, in a world of ARFs. Sig used to have some of the best kits (Commander, Cougar, Kadet, Eagle , Sky Tiger, Falcon 56, etc) but as well as they were designed they still had to be offered as ARFs because no one builds anymore, they just assemble, and fewer and fewer people have the dedication or discipline necessary to practice and pay their dues as required by pattern.
 
Short anecdote:
I work as an instructor at my local club (and it is work) every Thursday evening. I was trying to teach one of my students to take off and he was having a very hard time. He had mastered left and right turns and wanted to move on. He was having great difficulty keeping the plane straight on taxi and was nearly decapitating people every take off by over controlling and slashing toward the pits. He had two problems, one: the other instructors had never had him even touch the left stick other than to advance the throttle so it was very unnatural for him, and the second was he had way too much throw in his front wheel. I told him that he needed to reduce the throw in his steering and he said "what do you mean". I told him that his steering was too sensitive and was reducing his margin of error on take off to nearly nothing and he got that deer in the headlights look. We went around and around on this fairly simple concept for about 20 minutes. We are talking about a guy who was in his
 second summer of flying and had assembled a number of ARF/RTFs but had no concept of how the rudder and steering linkage worked. He had no idea how to reduce the throw and what affect moving in or out on the servo wheel, or up and down on the control horn would have. I took a poll and the vast majority of the students old and young had no idea how to change the throw or even what that meant. The point is, anyone with a CC # can get in the air without having to build or learn the basic aerodynamic lessons that form a basis for RC flight. It is those people down the road that are NOT accepting the pattern challenge, and we should not be surprised. Pattern is not for everyone and that is not soon to change. We need to be like Sig and try to change with the times, but not change what pattern is. It is a very difficult task and if I come up with a good answer I will certainly let everyone in on it.
 
Thanks for your time
Anthony
D-4

william krueger <wkrueger1 at wi.rr.com> wrote:
We need to talk about giving pattern more audience appeal, why do you think
that free style is so popular, people see it and say "I gotta try that" even
the wife's like to watch it. Maybe it is time for a new pattern category
which includes free style.

Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Diamond" 
To: 
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: Too quiet, test


> Last Time I saw this subject line, I started a thread about how the points
> were tallied and challenged the scoring system...
>
> 400 e-mails later it died out...Probably don't want to start that one
again
> till next year...
>
> See ya,
>
> Larry
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Atwood, Mark" 
> To: ; "nsrca" 
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 3:03 PM
> Subject: RE: Too quiet, test
>
>
> Yup
>
> -Mark
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Kane [mailto:getterflash at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Fri 10/10/2003 3:59 PM
> To: nsrca
> Cc:
> Subject: Too quiet, test
>
> Is it working?
>
>
> Bob Kane
> getterflash at yahoo.com
>
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