[NSRCA-discussion] Another update from Tram USA

[Peter Vogel]

Buongiorno!!! Sorry for the delayed post, and this one won't be much longer. We're in the home stretch of the prelims with everyone flying their very last flight of P19 ever. No more asymmetrical full roll stall turns!

Today started early again with Brett up first. Sun still full in the box unfortunately. He flew very well with a tough wind pushing in and put up a good score with a 454. That's the toughest Judge line so it seems, so that will be a good score.

2 hours later, Jason flew a crisp flight, out just a bit farther than usual and a touch faster to counter the wind, and put up a 469. Obviously a good score for that line.

And just now, Andrew flew a 471 on his line, possibly the best flight he's flown thus far. We still have Joseph to go at 4:30 and Kal at 7:10.

It does look like we have a good chance to have all 5 pilots in the semi-finals which would be AWESOME. We'll know later tonight. Team Managers meeting to do the Semi Finals pilot draw is scheduled for 9pm.

A quick look back at yesterday - I mentioned we had a bit of a tough day. The reality is we were simply frustrated. One of the challenges of world competition is that all of the subjective elements of our "sport" can vary tremendously from region to region. So while we strive for uniformity world wide, there are still large differences in how certain things are done. Thus, a great flight for us, isn't always so for some of the foreign judges, and I'm sure vice versa. Style IS part of the sport. So we collectively were underwhelmed with our scores yesterday. But again, that's part of the program.

The evening was an interesting meeting of the FAI F3A subcommittee (of which I am the new USA representative), along with participation from any pilot or TM that wished to participate. It was generally a brain storming session to help set the direction of F3A with regard to sequences, rules, procedures, etc.

A lot of discussion revolved around the new normalization procedures, which I think will be short lived. There seemed to be general consensus that it introduced more issues than it resolved. A few are strongly in favor of it, but my guess is that we will revert back in the next rules cycle.

Other discussions were around length of schedules (lots of challenges with the larger European events that have 50+ pilots and they only fly 1 at a time, so a weekend event may only get 2 rounds in). No real movement there, but lots of ideas. There was also some talk around the recent push for a lot of Knife edge maneuvers and what that's done to aircraft design.

In the end, only one message came through strongly. The subcommittee wants to be transparent, and wants to do what its member pilots want. THAT requires feedback and attention PRIOR to passing proposals, NOT after it's already done. In short, complain early, not late.

That's it for now. I'll try and post final prelim standings late tonight along with a pilot draw for Friday. Tomorrow is a practice day if we get through today rain free...which is looking... dodgy.

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