Leaving Early NATS 05

[Jerry Budd]

Hi Marty,

I offer the following comments not as criticism but so that you can 
be aware that there are still some problems with the scoring that 
need some attention.

>Scoring had taken a bad rap in past years and had many
>holes in the system. This year many of those were
>closed with regular hand written score sheets (not
>scantron),

I agree, the hand written score sheets were a BIG improvement, 
especially from my perspective as a judge on the Advanced line 
Wednesday afternoon.

>new format tear sheets,

IMO, much better than what we've had before.

>speedy return of
>those sheets so you could make adjustments before your
>next flight the same day

Sorry, here's where we differ as I can't agree with that assessment 
(here's an opportunity for improvement).

In the prelims I was only able to get 3 of my 6 score sheets, 1 of 2 
on Monday, both of them on Tuesday, and none on Wednesday.  I flew in 
the mornings and went to both Site 1 & 3 several times in the 
afternoons, and also to the Farmhouse at the end of each day, to no 
avail.  When I asked at the Farmhouse about them I was consistently 
told "we just took a big batch out to the sites, did you check 
there?" but when I went back to the sites there were no new score 
sheets there.  Finally I just "gave up" as it seemed to be the same 
problem I've run into the past three Nats.

[Note to D7 guys - can we start a petition to get Luke Peng to the Nats?!!]

During the first round of the Masters Finals 4 or 5 of us got 
scoresheets that had obvious errors in how the scores were totaled. 
We were initially told that the score sheets would be corrected, then 
later told that we would not be getting ANY of our scores during the 
finals (which turned out to be true).  AFAIK, none of the Masters 
finalists ever saw any of their raw scores, and we didn't see any of 
the normalized round totals until after the awards were presented. 
To be honest, it didn't seem like Masters was given the same 
organizational attention as FAI on Site 1.  As an example, there was 
no sound check equipment available at Site 3 during the Masters 
Finals, so a quick pilots meeting was held wherein we all voted to 
"not bother with it".

>and the timely posting of
>scoring data.

In Masters, unfortunately not.

Again, I offer the above observations not as criticism but so that 
those who are working so hard to improve the situation know where the 
problems lie.  Scoring the Nats is a thankless job and if we're going 
to pay anyone for their time, it's those guys (& gals).

Thx, Jerry


-- 
___________
Jerry Budd
Budd Engineering
(661) 722-5669 Voice/Fax
(661) 435-0358 Cell Phone
mailto:jerry at buddengineering.com
http://www.buddengineering.com
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