The Big One

[Ed Alt]

Hi Ed:
Well, I'm also a pattern newbie as of this year, but I've competed in Scale Aerobatics for a few years and was a past IMAC Regional Director.  IMAC is the SIG, Scale Aerobatics is the event.

You are correct about the basics of the scale appearance aircraft requirement.  Except for Basic class, it's supposed to be an approximation of a full scale aerobatic aircraft (single engine gas or electric, bipe or monoplane) known to have either competed in any IAC competition or known (thought?) to be capable of doing so.   So it could be a clipped wing Cub (known) through a Turbo Raven (assumed capable at one point in time).  The fact that the full scale Turbo Raven was a gas turbine would not make it illegal, unless you stuck a gas turbine in the model.  Any size and AMA legal weight is permitted. It's pretty much a wide-open field.

As for proof of scale, the rules do place the burden on the pilot, but I've never seen it enforced.  Occasionally there has been a minor dispute over things like Hanson's version of the Extra 300 (I think it was called the Excess).  Look at the Aeroworks Extra and squint real hard and you can convince yourself it evolved from a full size Extra 300, but to me it looks more like a big pattern ship.  If a CD really wanted to, he could probaly disqualify either, but you'll probably never see it happen.  I always figured that if a better pilot beat me, I wasn't going to quibble over whether the fuselage looked a little too skinny or long from 10 feet away. 

I can't say much about the differences in handling, since I've only logged about 30 minutes on a Focus and I have been just getting basic adjustments done, but I can tell you that many of the designs that are available for Scale Aerobatics are well evolved for precision flying.  Designers do fuss with stab placement, a little dihedral here and there etc and wind up with fairly neutral handling in some cases.  Some other things that you see showing up in the larger models add quite a bit to their ability to do so-called 3D flying and sometimes detract from things like easy spin entries and good snapping habits.

Generally speaking though, the large majority of what is commonly fielded for SA competition would not be legal for most pattern events.  Conversely, it's more difficult to be competitive with smaller, pattern legal models in SA Basic. To sum it up, there are probably just a handful of "crossover" models available that would be legal and capable in both events.  Personally, I would go with optimizing my equipment choice for the particular event, because in SA, size most definitely matters.  Whether it should or not is a different question.
Ed Alt

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Edward C. Hernandez 
  To: discussion at nsrca.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 11:16 PM
  Subject: The Big One


     Ok, I've waited long enough and I'm ready to pop the big newbie question: what is(are) the difference(s) between NSRCA and IMAC? I understand that for IMAC you need a scale model(except for basic class), while it is clear to me that NSRCA models have evolved into a characteristic shape. From this I deduce that scale models just don't perform NSRCA schedules as well as pattern models do. But I have a sneaky, perhaps incorrect, suspicion that the differences go beyond the models. What are these differences, and does anyone compete in both aerobatics groups?

  Ed "naive as hell" Hernandez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.f3a.us/pipermail/nsrca-discussion/attachments/20040407/80e09d4b/attachment.html