[NSRCA-dist6] District Champion

Mon Sep 8 12:54:04 AKDT 2014

Cliff,
I assume you are referring to Scott's proposal as presented in the 
District 6 column of the K-Factor.

Scott's proposal is  a trial balloon  attempting to equalize opportunity 
across the district for a competitor to be a district champion. Over the 
past few years it has been very difficult for anyone in New Mexico or 
Colorado to compete in the district overall due to the smaller size of 
our contests and the distance to the more heavily attended contests in 
the eastern end of the district.  Is this proposal the answer to all the 
problems? No way. Are Scott and Brian trying to help us out here? Yes.

Right now it is only possible to be competitive if you are willing to 
make several trips to east Texas and Louisiana. BTW, you have to win as 
well and often give up attending a contest in our end of the district as 
no effort to maintain time separation of contests is made. Of course 
there is another problem- contests back east are not consistent in size. 
Just because a contest back east had 35 contestants last year doesn't 
mean there will be more than 20 this year. Hard to plan for that from 
long-distance.

As you mention, all four of the contests out this way so far have been 
poorly attended by the locals and outside support has been close to 
non-existent this year. I don't expect the upcoming Fall Pattern Classic 
here in Albuquerque to have much better attendance. If this keeps up, we 
won't have to worry about equalization or contest schedule separation as 
we won't have any contests around here. I, for one, will not continue 
indefinitely to help put on contests that struggle to get to 15 
contestants( and none have come close this year). No one around here 
counts the District Championship as something to strive for as it 
demands too much money and time. No one is attending contests around 
here with the expectation of placing high in the District.

I am not sure that Scott's proposal will do anything to either help or 
hinder the current attendance apathy but the current point system 
certainly does not work for the District Championship.  Scott's proposal 
has the same issue as the current system . It is not possible to 
equalize the points scored at contests when the attendance at individual 
contests is so lop-sided. You can object to counting the Nats more 
heavily than a local contest but I would disagree. You should be 
rewarded more for winning the Nats than for winning the largest local 
contest in the district, which is where we are now.  If we have a lack 
of equalization between local contests due to field size, why should the 
Nats points be limited? That is the same as saying the average class 
size out west is three and back east it is seven so we will count all 
district contest point scores as if all contests had three contestants. 
Another problem with the proposal is the reduction of out-of-district 
contests from two to one. The closest  point from new Mexico for a 
contest not in Colorado or New Mexico, is Phoenix. Phoenix currently has 
two contests and they do not conflict with our schedule and they are 
typically well attended.

One way that might work is to divide the district in half and require 
that one of your five contests be in the other half of the district. if 
you don't go then you only get to count four contests.
Another would be to hold a District Championship rotating annually 
between east and west. The Championship could count as a sixth contest.

I think what we need is more cross-pollenization and interaction 
throughout the district which would be a good thing whether associated 
with District Championships or not.

In closing, Cliff, I suggest you take a good look at the proposal and 
see what you can do to improve it. I  assure you the current system does 
not allow equal opportunity for the west. We were better off in the old 
days with a District Championship event than what we have now.  If you 
won the DC, you were the champ.
As far as the Nats are concerned, distances and costs  are not too much 
different than going to a local contest in the eastern end of the 
district. Let's see. Go to the Nats, meet and fly against some of the 
best pilots from across the country or go east and fly in a somewhat 
larger local contest than you can find at home. Of course, it's best to 
do both and that has nothing to do with the District Championship.

John Gayer

On 9/7/2014 10:51 AM, Clifton Bradford via NSRCA-dist6 wrote:
> I disagree with the take that we as a district should support the NSRCA Nationals and whomever is lucky enough to win should be our district champ.
>
> I think you should look at what represents a district champ. For me it isn't the highest placing dist 6 pilot at the Nats. I am of the opinion that the dist champ should represent the district and not the Nats.  Pattern contest are few and the distances you must travel are huge, to say O points earned for attending a contest with less than three would kill the few that we have. If there is no reward why not stay home and practice or take the kids to a movie or whatever.
>
> So who represents dist 6 as the Champion now, it is the person who spends his or her money putting the miles on and attending and supporting the local contest. To me this is as it should be. In 1995 I attended 6-7 local contest and placed 3rd in sportsman at the Nats, the Nats was the only contest I lost and I was not the district champ. At that time there was a contest in the Dallas/Fort worth area  and whomever won that single contest was the champ. In my opinion that person did not represent the district, but only the winner of a local contest.
>
> I campaigned rather hard and was vocal with my thoughts at the time and the District champ was changed to the format we now enjoy. To adjust the system to a point that attending a local contest had little impact on the Championship would be a huge mistake.
>
> Personally I have only made the trip to the Nats, three times. Each time I left with the feeling that I had attended a local contest and chose not to make the trip anymore. I may or may not attend in the future but if I worked at winning that contest and spent my money towards that instead of supporting pattern within the District 6 area I would not feel that I should be champ because I won the Nats.
>
> Pattern contest have dwindled to the point that only a few remain, after a long absence I was able to attend two local contest this year one had only 9 people across all classes, the other had only 12. To follow Scott's suggestion would have a negative impact on these contest, by removing any opportunity to gain points toward the Dist Champ.
>
> Our District Champ should be just that. I see that as the person that puts in the time to attend as many local contest as possible. By rewarding that we will continue to have local contest but make them worthless and the result will be no contest and pattern will continue to fall even further in our area.
>
> Cliff Bradford, NSRCA 1481
>
> Sent  from my iPad
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