[NSRCA-dist7] Fwd: Season Championship Thoughts

Fri Feb 13 21:22:06 AKST 2015

Since it will be a cold day In hell before I am ever in the running for Dist Champ, I have very ambivalent feelings on this.  I understand and applaud Sean for trying something different within the Dist.  I know as well as anyone that it is next to impossible to get any significant changes to happen within our organization.  That being said, I don’t think we should stop trying.  So, since Sean is our VP, and has the authority to make these types of changes within the Dist.  I say we give it a try, if it doesn’t work, we can always go back to the way it was next year.  And if anyone really has any heartburn as to how Sean is running the Dist., all you have to do is put your name in for the next election, and if enough people agree with you – you can make whatever changes you want then.  Just my 2 cents.

Bill Wallace
Commercial Sales Manager
Bridgestone Commercial Solutions
4000 E. Mission Blvd.
Ontario, CA  91761
Cell Phone - 951-385-2605
Fax number - 615-493-2333

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From: NSRCA-dist7 [mailto:nsrca-dist7-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of joncarter60 via NSRCA-dist7
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 11:01 AM
To: NSRCA D7 List
Subject: [NSRCA-dist7] Fwd: Season Championship Thoughts

Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S®4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: Jon Carter <jon.x.carter at oracle.com<mailto:jon.x.carter at oracle.com>>
Date:02/13/2015 10:57 AM (GMT-08:00)
To: "Jonathan Carter (joncarter60 at comcast.net<mailto:joncarter60 at comcast.net>)" <joncarter60 at comcast.net<mailto: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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