[NSRCA-dist7] Fwd: Season Championship Thoughts

Fri Feb 13 18:17:41 AKST 2015

Another couple of comments.

The title is the District Championships not the Seasonal Championship. That is something you are adding but it is not what we are doing.

And you keep talking about the F3A pilots. All 6 of us native to D-7 that flew in 2014. I'll bet if you ask Steve Hannah, Matt Kimbro, Adrian Wong, Matt Stringer and Herb Kurlan they went to as many contests as time and money would permit. I know I went to as many as I could afford and that was 7 counting the Champs. If I had the money I would go to all of them! But I don't and this year I probably can't make that many. Wish we had a group of guys down here to travel together like you guys have up north. Plus a Dale Olstinske who'll buy the vehicle to carry all of us.

Have the numbers shown that in the last few years the number of contests and the number of entrants have been in decline? If that is so then maybe it makes some sense to try to increase participation. But taking a look at the numbers I see we are having more contests and more entrants on average. Here are some more "statistics".

2012 - 13 contests - average entry 21.53

2013 - 16 contests - average entry 23.56

2014 - 16 contests - average entry 24.06

So the number of contests are increasing or staying the same and number of entrants are increasing. What are we trying to fix????

And this does not take in to account any of the Classic contests or the Classic entries at the combined contests.

Tony Frackowiak

On Feb 13, 2015, at 2:14 PM, Jonathan L Carter via NSRCA-dist7 wrote:

> Chris – As I indicated in my post, the data shows that Sean’s change is primarily symbolic. That being said, it is important symbolism in my mind. First, it reinforces the fact that this is a “Season”- “Championship”; the pilot’s participation in the “season” is important. Second, there were a few pilots (in FAI) who only attended three contests last year and the season championship! Perhaps under Sean’s new system we will get to see their smiling, happy faces at four contests! This has the direct potential to increase local contest attendance. Now you might argue that they will ignore the fame, honor and chicks that come along with being the D7 season champion due to this new requirement. I sure hope not but if they do, we will miss them. L
>  
> Having two out of district contests able to count really makes it easier for our more remote located pilots to accumulate the four contests required. Now they only need two regular in district contests and they can fill the other two with, hopefully, closer out of district contests.
>  
> Now, if you want me to add Gross Yearly Income… J
>  
> Jon Carter
>  
> From: Chris Fitzsimmons [mailto:kfactoreditor at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 12:28 PM
> To: joncarter60; CA, AZ, HI, NV, UT
> Subject: Re: [NSRCA-dist7] Fwd: Season Championship Thoughts
>  
> Did you break those down by Gross Yearly Income? lol I'm guessing the contests are attended more by people who earn more.
> 
> From those numbers, it's a wash you are saying from both view points. Sean's idea makes 0 difference and will not make any difference on getting more people to attend more contests because people already attend more than that many contests. Matter of fact, twice as many currently. On the other side, it also has no difference on who will win the district Champion because more contests are already attended than 3 by twice as much. The ratio actually goes down by adding the 4th contest.
> 
> As I stated before, adding a 4th win needed (per say), negates the need for the 2nd out of district contest needed. They still need 2 in district so it makes 0 difference. Am I missing something there? 
> 
> Thanks for doing the great numbers and write up on this Jon! 
> 
> C
>  
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 11:01 AM, joncarter60 via NSRCA-dist7 <nsrca-dist7 at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:
>  
>  
>  
> Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S®4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
>  
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Jon Carter <jon.x.carter at oracle.com>
> Date:02/13/2015 10:57 AM (GMT-08:00)
> To: "Jonathan Carter (joncarter60 at comcast.net)" <joncarter60 at comcast.net>
> Cc:
> Subject: Season Championship Thoughts
>  
> NSRCA District 7 Season Championship Thoughts
>  
> There has been some discussion on the D7 list lately regarding the changes that Sean is implementing this year for the NSRCA season championship award. I think we need to mention what it is that the season championship should represent. In my opinion, it’s more than just picking the best pilot on a given day. It should represent a “season” of competition with all that goes along with that. You know the stuff that makes our sport great. (Flying, BS’ing, Saturday night dinners, helping out other pilots, calling, teasing other pilots, etc. etc.!) Now, given our format for the season champion I think we have a good balance between picking the best season competitor and picking the best pilot. We generally have the top two, three or four pilots all going into the season championship essentially tied on points so it often does come down to who has the “stuff” for that one big contest! Sean’s initial proposal discussed at the AMA Expo was to increase the number of contests that had points counted from 3 to 5. There was much discussion with a slight majority thinking that 5 contests were too many to count. There was more discussion and a number of 4 was proposed. Most people present seemed to think this was a good number. Sean also is allowing 2 “out of district contests” to count towards a D7 pilot’s total. This is aimed to assist some of our D7 pilots who live farther away from most of the D7 contests but are closer to some adjacent district contests. I support both of these modifications.
>  
> Just for grins, I went and looked at how many contests the pilots in different classes attended last year. This is for all district pilots in all classes. Here is the data.
>  
> Class
> Average # of contests attended in 2015 by D7 pilots
> Sportsman
> 4.8
> Intermediate
> 6.2
> Advanced
> 5.1
> Masters
> 5.2
> FAI “Silver”
> 6.8
> FAI-F3A
> 3.8
>  
> I think this shows that FAI pilots need to come out and fly at some more D7 contests!!! Except for them, everyone already attends at least 4 contests a year anyway! I then looked at “how many contests did the pilots who actually attended the season championship go to during the year”
>  
> Class
> Average # of contests attended in 2015 by D7 pilots who attended the season championship
> Sportsman
> 6.6
> Intermediate
> 6.8
> Advanced
> 7.0
> Masters
> 6.2
> FAI “Silver”
> 6.7
> FAI-F3A
> 4.0
>  
> Interesting! Again, FAI is the outlier but all of the other classes go to at least 6 contests per year! I didn’t crunch the data for other years but I looked them over and they appear pretty similar to 2015.
>  
> Now, expense has been mentioned and that certainly is a factor in these difficult economic times. As you can see from the data though people are already going to enough contests! With the addition of allowing two out of D7 contests to assist those pilots who are less centrally located I really do not think this will have a negative economic impact on our pilots. I really think that the relatively slight modification that Sean has made to our season championship scoring system is a positive step towards reinforcing attendance at local contests albeit, mostly symbolic according to the data.
>  
> Another item that has been mentioned is where to have the District Championship? When I first started flying in the District it moved around quite a bit. I remember one in Las Vegas where it was freezing cold and blowing a gale for the 14 pilots who attended! (We got in one day of flying!) I also was at a championship contest in Prado that had a good turnout but it snowed on Saturday night! (Also a 1 day!) It seems that a central location with, as much as possible, reliable weather in the late October timeframe would be ideal. Arvin has certainly fit that bill very well recently as has Fresno. My personal opinion is that if we want to move it around some that is great! Maybe a little further south some years, maybe a little further north, maybe we even go crazy and have Gary or John arrange something in AZ!!! The point being that it really seems Sean is open to moving it around to places that make sense. When he first published the preliminary season schedule for 2015 in November of 2014 there was a question mark on the location of the district championship. That is the time to approach Sean and your club to formulate plans. As far as I know the only clubs/people that offered to host it were Fresno and Arvin. Since we had done Fresno last year Sean chose Arvin. I think that is a great field with (usually) great weather and an active group of pattern flyers! Sounds good to me!
>  
> In summation I want to thank and congratulate Sean for doing a great job as District VP! He has reached out to pilots and solicited input from all and made reasoned, considerate decisions. Just like we elected him to do! Our district is the envy of many others for our weather, our contests, our fun and our great people! Let’s keep it that way.
>  
> Jon Carter
> Ex District 7 VP!
>  
>  
>  
> 
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> --
> Chris Fitzsimmons
> Team F3A Unlimited
> Team BJ Aircraft
> Team Airtronics
> 08/12 D7 Masters Champion
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