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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>While I currently sure don't have a
pony in this show I have kept a couple pattern ships with the anticipation of
returning to the sport I loved so adamantly but knowing at best I would be a
casual attendee and seeing some of the complexity of current maneuvers my
aircraft will again be severely out classed. Thus either I have to burn
significantly more fuel and practice time to have a good showing or move to a
state that has longer seasons for flying.. Those of us that have job driving
forces that have to be met are at even a bigger disadvantage.. Thankfully that
don't apply to me anymore but the weather and the taxing schedule can leave me
brain fried when self practicing in two flights.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>I sure don't understand the goal of
trying to raise the bar of AMA classes if the goal is to bring new blood to the
sport for those that are at best flying only once a week at best. Master
used to be a destination class with those seeking to represent the country and
enter the world arena would enter FAI. Sportsman class used to be entered
by people that only competitor once or twice a year and prepared one
weekend before the contest. I dare say that the sport has not grown the last 10
years and fields are getting harder to locate that can host pattern contests.
CD's often have to go begging for manpower to run them. Making the maneuvers
harder to judge tasks those assigned to judge as well as those
that call for a pilot to help out. Making them more difficult mandates
that people have a practice team and a regular caller to feel relaxed and
perform well.. Those are o.k. in the FAI class but not in the AMA classes
if you want to make it easier to draw the casual flier.
</FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=nsrca-dist1@lists.nsrca.org
href="mailto:nsrca-dist1@lists.nsrca.org">JOE LACHOWSKI via NSRCA-dist1</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=danamaenia@me.com
href="mailto:danamaenia@me.com">Dana Beaton</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=nsrca-dist1@lists.nsrca.org
href="mailto:nsrca-dist1@lists.nsrca.org">District 1 NSRCA Mailing List</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, June 03, 2015 1:30
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [NSRCA-dist1] Masters
proposal</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>I wrote the guide. It was written purposely to slow down the
difficulty creep. Obviously that didn't work.<BR>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Fuck Californai!<BR><BR>Joe Lachowski</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>On Wed, Jun 03, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Dana Beaton wrote:
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(136,136,136) 2px solid; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex">
<DIV>Hi Joe, all, I hear you and I get your anger too. We now need to
<U>use all channels of communication to get your points-of-view to the NSRCA
leadership</U>.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>The old saw “As California goes, so goes the Nation” does feel right to
me for some time now. A few other recurring themes are cause for concern on
my part, and I offer them here to expand this conversation within D1, to
help us think it through with our DVP, and to focus ourselves on the winds
of change:</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>One theme is that competitors freely go back and forth between 404 and
F3A. There may be an unstated goal to bring these two schedules
closer together to make them easier to judge; and/or similar in challenge
/ difficulty, as competitors freely choose one or the other at contests
depending on who shows up to fly, to even out the classes as a practical
matter. Interesting hypothesis that plays havoc with Committee work!
The unexamined ramification is that closing the 404-F3A gap opens up
all the other gaps between the lower classes, and this is
problematic.</LI></UL>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>Serving two masters: The Sequence Development Guide is already so
narrowly focused it is too difficult to work with to come up with
something creative that is also within the guidelines. This will be
difficult for some to hear, but I find it to be overly prescriptive as
guidelines go (and I write guidelines for living). Nonetheless, we
as a Committee and the BoD too have made a commitment to stick to the
Guide, no matter how difficult it is to work with. The new design
direction to incorporate things FAI just adds to their frustration, as it
is nearly impossible to come up with a new schedule that is both FAI
inspired and AMA compliant! One cannot really serve two masters and
expect to succeed in life, or pattern, I believe.</LI></UL></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>Related to the above, it seems to some more important that that 404
and F3A look and feel similar to make judging easier for each other, since
one class is assumed to usually judge for the other class. This of
course does not recognize the diversity of contests where Advanced may
judge the Masters class in other parts of the country, etc. In that
setting, it makes sense for things AMA to stay AMA, and not adopt FAI
conventions.</LI></UL>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>Another theme is that sequences in recent years were felt to be dumbed
down by the majority of NSRCA members, and the overall challenge level
needs to come up for ALL classes. I have vigorously resisted this
notion, and have been most successful keeping the Intermediate
appropriate, and urging a reasonable Advanced proposal. The
membership at-large needs to speak up if the new proposals are too
difficult, as this was as low as they would could go and still make it out
of Committee to the BoD and K-Factor for the membership to comment on.
Where I have not been successful is the Masters class, to wit, the current
proposal. This is the kind of sequence our NSRCA President and Committee
Chair want us to have, and we almost had it’s sister for the Advanced
proposal until the very last weeks before the publication deadline (when
CA #2 was tabled).</LI></UL>
<DIV><BR></DIV></DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>A related theme is that the Masters class is generally overpopulated,
that there are Masters competitors who would step down if the Advanced
class were more challenging. This is problematic for me as I don’t
think we should be managing pilot populations through sequence design.
This theme is never explicitly stated, however it does loom in the
background of reasoning why this maneuver or that, if you will. Food
for thought.</LI></UL>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>The Advanced class is something of a middle child, pulled in one
direction by the population of Masters who are thought would gladly step
down if the Advanced alternative were palatable; and pulled in the other
direction by folks like me who need a reasonable step-up from
Intermediate, where reasonable is defined as having a sequence where the 4
new maneuvers are in a schedule that sets-up for success, rather than
adding challenge beyond the 4 new maneuvers, i.e., F3A-like styling,
asymmetry as challenge, and difficulty due to design intent. There
is also a theoretical third wheel population of pilots who want more
challenge than Advanced offered historically, but choose to not move up
due to the local pilot population: They would like to have a “Masters
sequence for the rest of us” (those who will not or cannot practically
move up in class).</LI></UL></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<UL class=MailOutline>
<LI>All good arguments perhaps for another class, or bringing back the
Expert class, but Nats related logistics quickly quashes that concept.
Then there is this interesting theme of the “California Nats” which
seems to be the test bed for lots of new things that the rest of NSRCA
need to digest.</LI></UL>
<DIV><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Right now, we are getting a good healthy dose of California sunshine on
the pattern patch; time will tell if their new direction for us is viable
and leads to the growth and health of the sport, or falls by the wayside as
passing fad. What my intent is here is to get us in D1 thinking about
some of the themes that I perceive to be driving the winds of change.
These may or may not be accurate, just my observations, and you may
think of others. Like it or not, we are being presented with new stuff
to digest. We can either discuss and dissent, or silently accept and
just let things fall where they may. Your call.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Respectfully,</DIV>
<DIV>Dana</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>On Jun 3, 2015, at 9:15 AM, JOE LACHOWSKI <<A
href="mailto:jlachow@optonline.net">jlachow@optonline.net</A>>
wrote:</DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<DIV>Fuck FAI on roll reversals. The sequence needs to be dumbed down in a
few places. This pattern reflects the West Coast only. It is designed to
favor those California morons who can fly all season. As designed people
in the colder climates don't have a chance. Lacks creativity. It copies
the existing FAI sequences too much. So much that Masters may has
well fly FAI.
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If I am able to compete in the future, it will be at the Advanced
level which is getting closer and closer to what a Masters sequence should
be take a few maneuvers here and there.<BR><BR>If I am not 100% by next
spring, I will be having a fire sale.<BR><BR>Joe Lachowski</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 04:20 PM, Dana Beaton via
NSRCA-dist1 wrote:
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(136,136,136) 2px solid; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex">
<DIV>Hi guys, the Sequence Committee Chair wrote a nice article in this
month’s K-Factor. The following from that article may be of
interest to you: </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV class=page title="Page 10">
<DIV class=layoutArea>
<DIV class=column>
<P><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'GillSansMT'; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-WEIGHT: 700">Roll
Reversals: </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'GillSansMT'; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Until now, we have
allowed a hesitation between roll reversals in all AMA classes. Starting
with this 2016 Masters sequence, we are proposing that roll reversals
shall be immediate, just as with F3A rules. This will only apply to
Masters class. </SPAN></P>
<DIV>Please give Anthony, me, or the Sequence Committee directly
(through the link on NSRCA site) your feedback about this and/or the
proposals in the coming months. You are also encouraged to
speak-up for anything you do like in the proposals; I’ve noticed that
most of the feedback we get is negative, what people don’t like.
The problem with that is that a few folks can actually get changes
made to something you may want to fly next year! If we don’t also hear
what people do like in the proposals, it is easy to just give in to the
few who do speak-up and a maneuver that you find just fine may be
gone!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Seriously, there is a lot going on in these 2 proposals and they
set the tone for the next few years, and perhaps for many more if the
membership likes this new direction NSRCA is taking with respect to
harmonizing AMA with FAI; just my observation, form your own opinion,
and let NSRCA know about it!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Good flying and see you at Pocono!</DIV>
<DIV>Dana Beaton</DIV>
<DIV>Sequence Committee, Intermediate</DIV>
<DIV>Contest Board, AMA D2</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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