Just for chuckles I decided to go out and fly all 7 of these sequences yesterday. In one flight. It may not have been the most sensible way to evaluate them - and my GoPro battery was dead so I don't even have them recorded for posterity - but hey, it was fun, and that's what we're here for. FTR, I flew them in an S-2B, at 4-6000 feet, on a 75 degree day. I pulled back the prop a little bit, so maybe I was emulating an S-2A, but I definitely wasn't emulating a Citabria or a Great Lakes. I didn't exceed +5 or -2G or come close to Vne at any point so I wasn't flying that hard.
Oh and one more thing: I'm just trying to kickstart the conversation - feel free to disagree with any of my comments. I'm just happy that we have some proposals on the table for 2014! Comments presented in the order flown, and I was getting just a little tired towards the end.
Jim's Intermediate: gotta be honest, I really enjoyed this. The first push is a bit of an odd sight picture but it's gentle, and the figures are fun. I think 7 and 8 would be challenging in a low-powered airplane. I like having a roller in there, too. If I were in Intermediate I'd love this as a Known.
Wes's Intermediate: fun sequence, but not as much fun for me. I'm not sure what folks in slow-rolling airplanes will think of the full roll on the downline of figure 2. A lot of the rest of the figures seem fairly Sportsman-esque.
My Sportsman: not going to comment too much. :-) Slowing down for the spin is a bit of a pain, but I didn't want to make it too easy...
Jim's Sportsman: another fun sequence. I'm not a huge fan of the figure 9-10 combo (45 down into a 45 up) but it flies just fine.
Wes's Sportsman: I like it. I'm not generally a fan of 45 uplines to start a sequence 'cos I enjoy starting with something a bit more dramatic. (That may be a hangover from my Decathlon days, where it took a 195mph box entry and a pull to vertical before the judges even noticed I was in the box.... ) Downwind spin is a little unconventional, too.
Rochelle's Sportsman 'A': Nice. No significant comments.
Rochelle's Sportsman 'B': I'm going to grumble about the 45 line to start again and the back-to-back Split-S and Immelman is not really my thing, but that's just a style point. My biggest concern about this one is figure 9, which will likely already start low in the box for in a low-powered airplane and then has them pulling onto a vertical downline. I feel this presents too big an opportunity for somebody to drive straight through the bottom of the box.
Thanks for going and flying the programs. For what its worth, that is what Brian Howard will do with the ones that have been sent to him as candidates (Note: To the best of my knowledege, posting the flight programs here does not make them a candidate)
If I may offer some thoughts on known program sequence design - each year the committee of IAC guys who evaluate prospective flight programs for the coming year seem to have one or more themes for each category. You will notice that the 2013 Sportsman Known does not include a cross box wind corrector set of figures. That is not accidental. I can hear at least one voice on the committee stating that Sportsman pilots should know, or learn, how to correct for the wind without the judges seeing their efforts. And in Intermediate over the last few years you can see figures appearing that move Intermediate closer to Advanced. There are IAC folks who think that the jump from Intermediate to Advanced was too large previously. So we now see rollers, and this year the half-snap.
My Sportsman program candidate is intended to make the pilot think on the fly or get well organized before firing up. Putting a 1 1/4 spin and humpty combination in the middle of the box gives the less than well organized competitor a tremendous opportunity to go the wrong direction and zero two or more figures. We see these kinds of traps in Unknown Programs. So to post a high score, the pilot must know their box position and roll the correct direction on the humpty.
The other thing that I attempted to do was to use a figure or two that you hardly ever see in Sportsman. Down half Cubans are easy but not common. The rest of the program is pretty common Sportsman stuff.
The figure #1 45 up line is actually an opportunity to get the judges attention and set the tone for your flight. Start at 4500', dive in doing your wing wags and making noise, level at the speed of heat or as close as you can get with your ship, THEN pull to 45 up and try to take it as high as you can and still fly away with enough speed for figure 2. Depending on your airplane, the closer to the bottom of the box you pull level before starting figure 1, the better.
The candidate Intermediate Known program again intends to throw in some figures that you do not see often, and make the pilot think about energy. You picked up on the obvious - Figure 2. To do that hammer-roll combination some pilots will need to start the roll very soon after the pivot to avoid excessive speed at the bottom. But they can get back their altitude by lofting figure 3 as high as their ship will allow since figure 4 is a spin. You just need to arrive at the top of figure 3 with enough energy to do the 2x4 roll.
Figure 7 has to be flown so that you enter figure 8 with speed to do a good snap roll. That means that you can not take the 45 as high as you might otherwise. A pilot who does not think about this might find themselves either driving out of the box to get enough speed or alternatively trying to snap at 90mph. The constraints of the box make this combination more interesting than is obvious.
For figure 10 you would like to finish at the bottom of the box, or as close as you dare, and exit with lots of energy for figure 11's vertical up line and 1/4 roll. That means making the start of the slit-S gentle rather than just pulling the nose through so that you can pick up as much speed as you are able. But a pilot who doesn't think about it, might half-snap, pull, and run out of energy trying pull vertical, draw a line, roll, make more line, and fly away inverted. Since this is the last figure and you are likely right in front of the judges, if you sink after laying out inverted, those judges will have to be blind to not award a serious deduction.
In addition, the pilots with fasts airplanes may have trouble keeping figures 5 - 7 in the box, especially if they feel that is their civic duty to drive that downwind 45 up to the edge of space. Pilots who fly slightly lower performance ships or who know how to position the throttle between 100% and 0% during their contest flight will have the opportunity score better.
So that is some of my sequence design reasoning. I am sure that other posters have their own rationale's for their program designs. That said, the committee that amalgamates these ideas into the final proposals for the fall board meeting will likely NOT be simply picking or designing a program that is only fun to fly. Its a competition and the final picks for the Known Programs will likely include some elements that "encourage" us to build and/or stretch our skills, and some elements that offer us the "opportunity" to separate ourselves from our peers, for good or bad.
Thanks, Wes. I've been dimly aware that there are various criteria applied in selection of Known sequences. I've never really known exactly what they are - although they can be somewhat inferred from past sequences - and part of the goal in establishing this thread was to try and get a bit more open discussion going around Known design. All of your points make sense to me.
You are correct that just posting a sequence to this thread doesn't count as "submitting" it, although I believe all of the ones posted so far have been sent to Brian.
For what its worth, you can find the list of the members of the Known Sequence Selection Committee in the IAC Yellow Pages deep in the IAC web site. The current members are
Brian Howard - Chair of the IAC Rules Committee
Adam Cope - a hugely experienced Decathlon CFI and competitor
John Morrissey - long time competitor, former US Team trainer, master S-2A pilot, and with a resume way to long to list here
Klein Gillhousen - long time glider aerobatics competitor
Howard Kirker
Matti Mecklin
Paul Thomson
Thore Thoresen
If you recognize one of these names as someone local to you, you can ask how the committee works. IAC is your organization so please ask.
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