adding interest and complexity to Sportsman ... again and again
and
David Borrow
teamvertical at excite.com
Thu Jan 6 14:52:30 AKST 2005
I flew Sportsman all last year. I think the complexity of the current design is a great stepping stone to Intermediate. It looks easy on paper but to make it look good in the air is something else. I think the most important thing I learned is to fly straight (wings level) and parrell to the flight line. Also the tracking in the two loops is critical. When I flew in the Lancaster contest with 20 mph winds well that taught me a whole lot for wind correction and getting more guts to take a chance in wind and not go home. And trying to perfect smooth landings and takeoffs. I think the sequence that Don suggested is kinda close to the current intermediate class sequence with a few exceptions (outside loop and square loop). Although with practice it would have been a fun sequence to fly and challenging. So for Don's sequence maybe drop the half rools in the cobra so the pilots can learn the geometry of it and the two rolls I think is a little to much of a challenage for that class. Remember we want people to be able to do this pattern with enough confidence to come back. And alot of people enter there first contest with planes that are not able to roll all that great and timing is not going to help all that much. Just my ideas. And I look forward to competing in Intermediate this year. Dave--- On Thu 01/06, Dean Pappas < d.pappas at kodeos.com > wrote:From: Dean Pappas [mailto: d.pappas at kodeos.com]To: discussion at nsrca.orgDate: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:57:06 -0500Subject: RE: adding interest and complexity to Sportsman ... again and again and
Hey George,When the wind blows, even a little bit, the present Sportsman schedule overtaxes both the concentration and skill of the entry level pilot.A certain amount of this is good, 'cause all real learning is painful, but this is a trap that the event has fallen into at least four times in my recollection. We keep changing schedules to maintain interest, and that's good.When we revise the schedules, we keep adding interest: that sounds good, but what we really almost always ended up doing was adding a tiny bit of complexity until ...We have to add a new class to the all-important bottom of the pyramid.Want to know how many times it's happened? Once it was called Novice, then we called it Pre-Novice, then the schedules all changed,and we called it Novice again, then we changed the name to Sportsman, and added Turnaround.I like the schedule Don proposes, but I'd rather have the Sportsmen fly two short schedules with a "holy cow!, let me get back from the next county." break between the schedules.Some Sportsmen go without a breath for a whole schedule. Okay that's a slight exageration.I have used the out-of-box time between those two schedules to coach, calm, and teach the incoming pilots. It's terribly useful. Oh yes, 3 rolls is infinitely more useful for teaching "elevator timing" than 2. You can fake it for 2, but the 3rd one requires that the plane be under control after 2.Hey Ron van Putte ... you out there?Tell the man about the time the Earth shook in Lake Charles! Regards,Dean Pappas Sr. Design Engineer Kodeos Communications 111 Corporate Blvd. South Plainfield, N.J. 07080 (908) 222-7817 phone (908) 222-2392 fax d.pappas at kodeos.com
-----Original Message-----From: discussion-request at nsrca.org [mailto:discussion-request at nsrca.org]On Behalf Of George KennieSent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 2:37 PMTo: discussion at nsrca.orgSubject: [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: Annex proposal - developmentI too find Don Ramsey's sequence very stimulating. Reminds me that I have always felt that the poor guys in Sportsman sometimes appear to be getting the short end of the stick regarding the schedule.Many contests that I have attended have them flying the sequence twice because the routine is so very short. I would like to see their schedule slightly modified to give them a little longer sequence and a little additional stimulation. I would propose something like the following.
1.T.O. U 2.Free Pass. D 3.Straight Flight Out. C U 4.Procedure Turn. T 5.Straight Flight Back. C D 6.1/2 Reverse Cuban Eight T 7.Immelman Turn. C U 8.Split S. T 9.2 Loops. C U 10.Exit The Box. U 11.Enter The Box. D 12.Non-Rolling Triangular Loop C U 13.Humpty Bump 1/2 roll up T 14.One 2-Point Roll C D 15.1/2 Cuban Eight. T 16.Non-Rolling Cobra. C U 17.Stall Turn. T 18.2 Rolls. C D 19.Exit The Box. 20.Landing. C U
C= Center,T=Turnaround, U= Upwind, D=Downwind.
My rationale is that this is the point that we need to encourage this class of fliers to work on their down elevator timing by introducing 2 rolls.This shouldn't be too much for them to handle as they are currently doing a 2 point roll. Also the 2 loops will sharpen their precision by making them work harder at presentation placement. The Procedure Turn will teach them something that will be required, and the Humpty should present no major problems as they are already doing a 1/2 Reverse Cuban.They should be learning the Stall Turn and the Triangular Loop will further strengthen their centering skills.There are seven maneuvers before taking a breather and seven more to complete the sequence. Now these fellows can fly ONE sequence like the rest of us and the time required should be no longer than the time required to fly a double schedule.
Sportsman pilots out there, let me know what you think. Georgie P.S.I wonder if there are any Sportsman guys monitoring this list??
_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.f3a.us/pipermail/nsrca-discussion/attachments/20050106/d6e740f7/attachment-0001.html
More information about the NSRCA-discussion
mailing list