[NSRCA-discussion] 2015 proposed sequences

Mon Aug 18 11:19:41 AKDT 2014

First. Lets look at the age demographics in Masters. I would dare say the majority of us are getting up there in age. I bet the majority of pilots in the finals for Masters this year were below the age of 50. The rest of us there who didn't make the finals Masters were probably 55 plus. Heck some 70 plus. Do we want to make things so difficult that it forces the older guys to just hang it up?

Second. As far as scoring, judging is subjective and aside from the obvious bad maneuver, we tend to lumber in the 7 plus to 10 zone. I have seen 10s given out that were in no way a ten. I still think some people are clueless as to what they  are seeing in the chair. Sometimes I even question my own ability. Especially when judging the integrated rolling stuff in FAI. Seeing scores of the top 8 at the Nats being reasonably close should be no surprise. Afterall, the Nats brings the best of the best from around the country to compete against each other.

Another thought, our numbers are dwindling significantly. People just don't have the time to practice to attain a repectable level of proficiency. Its a pride thing. I sure in heck don't want to be floundering in the air at a contest. Making the sequences significantly harder just dwindles those numbers further. For the most part at least 75% of those showing up at the majority of the contests at least in our neck of the woods are the same core group of diehards. Newbies are far and between.

 I do not see the same level of flying precision/ proficiency these days that was around in the lower classes 5 , 10, 15 or even 20 yrs ago and the numbers in those classes has been most significantly impacted. Look at IMAC, there biggest class is Basic. It's attainable to most anyone. From there with the significant difficulty jump in the other classes the numbers dwindle. We are just the inverse of that on the local level excluding FAI. When I first started flying pattern in the late 80's we were bottom heavy. I remember at one local contest flying against two dozen others in the then second level class, Sportsman. Things aren't healthy in the sport right now.

There is a larger jump between the classes as the sequences are proposed (primarily Intermediate to Advanced and then Masters).  Sportsman and Intermediate are reasonably designed within the intent of the guidelines. The rest  are no longer as representative of the building blocks approach as myself and several former members of the sequence committees of the past 10 to 15 years strived to accomplish with Masters as the destination class. And we tried to limit the difficulty creep with restraint. Believe me it was difficult to do so. This time around it is not so.  The sequences now appear as sequences that appease the bored, oh that would be cool to do, and those who could care less about flying with the gratest of precision and proficiency. Why there is such a fixation on the hourglass boggles the mind. It is such an ugly maneuver from the get go.

I could ramble on forever I guess, but that would be fruitless and everyone would think I was nuts. LOL.  We need to step back a little and rethink what we are trying to accomplish with the sequences that will assure a healthy event that will last. FAI is so different than AMA. FAI is designed to do one thing and one thing only, pick a World Champion. Our sequence progression is to build the basic skills at each level to make someone proficient enough to someday fly at the World level IF THEY CHOSE TO DO SO. Now we are forcing things that are FAI specific down to the AMA level. I think that is wrong. If you want to become proficient at integrated rolling and knifeedge geometric shapes, you can learn them on your own time. When you get to doing the FAI maneuvers, you already have the basics behind you and only need to focus on the FAI specific stuff. I for one do not want to expend the time and energy nor do I have the skill level to do these type of maneuvers. When the Sequence Guidelines were written, we specifically left out those maneuvers uniquely specific to FAI.

And one last thing to consider. Do we want sequences so difficult that they outright favor those in the warmer climates who are fortunate enough to have the weather they can practice in just about all year round? I already have to cram things into a short period of time just to fly with reasonable proficiency. And I know I have sacrificed time needed to set up my planes the right way which I have not been able to do. I have to take the easy way out and live with probably some unnecessary programmable mixes that are more  a hinderance than a help.

Signing Off!!!

To: nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 10:58:49 -0400
Subject: [NSRCA-discussion] 2015 proposed sequences
From: nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org

After several flights of the proposed schedules, I started writing this thinking that both Advanced and Masters are too hard. Reading a comment about the range of scores for the top eight from this years Nats made me rethink my position. The difference in Advanced was about 40 points per round and Masters was 109 points per round. If you look at the top seven Masters drops to 49 points per round. Pretty tight competition when compared to the FAI finals having a difference of 203 points per round. 
Does this help us? Do harder schedules make judging easier by forcing egregious errors instead of requiring judges to scour each maneuver for every little wing bobble? Just looking for a discussion not an argument. 
On a totally opposite point, given the attention that our hobby is getting from external eyes, particularly in the area of altitude limits do we want to be designing sequences with figure nines and hourglasses?  We seem to be pulling out some of the worst FAI maneuvers to add to our sequences. Agreeing with the earlier comment that turnaround was supposed to reduce our footprint yet we continue to see FAI using rolling circles, KE triangles, vertical eights in sequences. We should not follow this error. 
Anthony Romano

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