[NSRCA-dist7] District Championship conversation

Tue Apr 12 22:16:37 AKDT 2016

Last year when the previous DVP changed the system to what we had before I asked why? He could not be bothered to even reply to me. So I'm glad to have this discussion now. In the bit of discussion that was held I asked what were going to be the metrics to decide if the change was successful? Nobody mentioned any. But the reason that seemed to be used for the change was to try to increase local contest participation. Looking at the results from last year that has failed completely. Participation was down last year. So I feel we should return to our previous system.

I don't feel now is the time to make participating in the District Champs more expensive. Pattern is already growing more elitist every year. So I don't feel that we should be adding cost to the Champs. So I think 3 contests plus the Champs is enough. Making it a requirement to attend more or to include "bonus points" for more contests would just add cost.

I also never liked the idea of using out of district results. It should be as much head to head as possible. We already have enough separation of contestants between north, south, east and west. I can see where in other areas of the country where there are not as many contests in a single district it might work well. But we have plenty in D7. I don't think we need to use out of district results.

I am not in favor of reducing the importance of the District Championship contest. In other areas of the country where they can afford to go to the Nats every year their Champs may not be as important to them. But only a very small percentage of D7 members can afford to go to the Nats often. So our Champs means more to most of us. 

I do believe it is ridiculous to say that we have been holding "centralized" district champs. When was the last time a Champs was held in AZ? Or really even in SoCal? It has been in Central/Northern Cal for quite some time. And that's not changing this year. 

I just didn't see what was broken about how we were doing the Champs before it was unfortunately changed. So I feel we should return to what seemed to be a very successful system.

Tony Frackowiak

On Apr 12, 2016, at 9:11 PM, Peter Vogel via NSRCA-dist7 wrote:

> 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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> 
> -- 
> 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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