[NSRCA-dist7] District Championship conversation

[Peter Vogel]

Great discussion point John!

I had similar thoughts, namely "Good idea!" on the first read of Jeff's
article.

HOWEVER, I've looked a lot at what happens when you go to the use of raw
scores (or normalization to perfect, which is effectively what Jeff is
proposing) and it's never a good thing, normalization was introduced for
very good reasons (I still hear from judges who have been around for a
while that they judge high so that "their scores still count").

The system we have in place for D7 today does something very similar to
what Jeff proposes (your points for a contest are not based on how many
people you beat but rather on how your score relates to the score of the
best pilot in your class).  So, for example, at Apache Junction in
Intermediate:Steve L had 3997.77, I had 3995.54, my score was 99.94% of
Steve's score.  Steve gets 25 points, I get 24.9861.  It doesn't matter
whether there were 2, 3, or 10 people in the class (as it does for AMA
points, which have a completely different purpose, which we should also be
using for that purpose).

So I think our system addresses the concern of not having "how many you
beat" factor into things.  But if we agree with the argument that we have a
big district and the need to attend the district championship contest to
win the district championship is overly burdensome, you need a way to
reduce/eliminate the district championship contest -- effectively turning
it into just another local contest.

Personally, I would be disappointed to see that happen, I think the
district championships brings the district together at an intensity of
competition that you don't see at most local contests.  It has an electric
and focused atmosphere that I haven't seen duplicated at other contests.  I
see people at the championships that I rarely see at the local contests.

D7 is CA, AZ, UT, NV, HI.  We have some pilots in UT, but at least one of
them tends to attend contests in other districts rather than ours and his
position at the NATS and worlds kind of renders any kind of district
championship honors relatively insignificant.  I'm not aware of anyone who
flies contests in HI and I'm not sure there's enough there to make it
viable.  So that leaves CA, AZ, NV.  The vast majority of contests on our
schedule are in SoCal and equally accessible from populated sections of NV,
AZ and NorCal and we have traditionally gone to great effort to have the
district championships in a central location.  Even Reno isn't that far
from Sacramento which isn't too far from Fresno/Arvin/Oakdale.  So I
challenge the argument that our district is too wide spread to support a
central championship.

Now, we can certainly argue about some of the specifics of the calculation
(3 contests, vs 4, all in district vs. being able to count 2 out of
district contests, bonus points for attending more contests vs. no bonus
points, etc.) that would make it *possible* for someone who flew
consistently well at *a lot* of contests to be competitive for the district
championship even if they don't attend the district championship, etc. but
as I said, I'd hate to see the championship treated as "just another" local
contest.

I have some ideas along those lines, but I've said enough for now, I'm
interested in what thoughts others have.



On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 8:15 PM, John Bentley via NSRCA-dist7 <
nsrca-dist7 at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:

> Hello all,
>          This email is being sent  to start an open conversation concerning
> our D7 District Championship contest as well as the points system that
> determines the overall champion for each class. The current points system
> requires 4 contests be attended  ( 2 contests can be out of district) with
> each contest worth 25 points to the winner. Those possible 100 points are
> then
> used in the final calculation of the district champion, with the
> championship
> contest counting as 100 points for the winner. This system requires
> attendance
> at the championship to be the overall champion . Since our district is very
> large I want to explore other methods of determining the overall best
> pilots
> in our district. As a quick example a pilot could have attended and won 8
> contests within the district, if that pilot does not attend the single
> championship there is no way for that pilot to win the honor. Please read
> Jeff
> Worsham's article in the Kfactor  for some other districts perspective. My
> intention is for our district to honor the best and most consistent pilot
> for
> each class flown. I would like to explore the possibility of a ranking
> system
> throughout the contest season, based on raw not normalized scores. This
> would
> give a good light on who is the most consistent, as well as the best pilot.
> Let the fun begin!
> John
>
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> NSRCA-dist7 at lists.nsrca.org
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>



-- 
Director, Fixed Wing Flight Training
Santa Clara County Model Aircraft Skypark
Associate Vice President, Academy of Model Aeronautics District X
Treasurer, National Society of Radio Control Aerobatics (NSRCA)
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