unfair

[flyrite]

How interesting that this months "Sport Aerobatics" had 2 good articles that ...Directly{Giles Henderson} & indirectly{yours Wes Liu} addresses this very topic.

Also Giles's article educates as to the metric that use to be used to establish each planes "API" or aerobatic performance index. He also did a good job of pointing out that 2 planes with big differing API's could compete in the same category by giving the lower performance plane access to it's potential energy by designing sequences that didn't favor the higher performance planes.....Just extrapolate his point from the entry of the sport to advanced.

And to the point of designing sequences that do this...I made a post on this forum addressing the subject last year{fair unknowns} in October when the new knowns for 14 were being considered.

Tony

[WLIU]

This post turned out to be surprisingly long so if you are not interested in a little history and a discussion of the effort required to host an IAC aerobatic contest you can go on to another thread now.


On the topic of alternate contest formats I will suggest that there are a few issues to overcome if you are to change the competition format. Some easy some not so easy.


First, only about 700 pilots across the entire Continental US, 49 states maybe, compete. I can speak from experience that only a handful of those competitors have the desire to actually be a Contest Director. So those folks have an existing contest format to follow and there is enough work involved in organizing any aviation get together that inventing a new format is beyond most of them.


Now the competition format that we have has its roots in international competition. You likely know that our modern competition originated with the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) forming Commission Internationale de Voltige Aérienne (CIVA) to organize periodic competitions between pilots representing their nations. If you remember the Cold War, the aero clubs of western countries, and the national governments of communist countries, approached the World Aerobatic Competition just like the track and field sports organizations approached the Olympics. Winning the Nesterov Trophy was a matter of national pride, especially for the communist block nations who wanted to show the world that their system produced better everything than the soft, decadent, "corrupt", capitalist western societies (we all now know that once the Iron Curtain came down, all of those "superior" folks wanted to move here and did so at the first opportunity...).


The people who formed the Aerobatic Club of America focused on Unlimited only. They were having some fun but also building pilots and airplanes for international competition. IAC started as a separate organization that created the ladder of primary through Advanced competition categories that we have today. Eventually ACA faded away and IAC assumed ownership of all aerobatic competition in the US. But the location of the Nationals in Texas is one of the legacies of the old ACA. At the international level, up until a few years ago only the Unlimited category was flown. Relatively recently Advanced was brought into CIVA as a championship category.


Given the history it is not surprising that the format of the competition categories, and the organization of contests has not changed. There is a lot of acceptance of the tried and true format. Throughout the Cold War years, communist governments spent huge sums on building airplanes that their pilots could use to win bragging rights over the decadent capitalist western pilots. Individuals and small companies in the western world did their best to build even better equipment. There was something of a technology “race”. Of course, in our capitalist society, the pilots, not the government, has to figure out how to pay for the ride. It still works that way. Our system gives us great airplanes like the Edge and the MX, but they are not free. But figuring out how to pay for the ride has always been part of aerobatic competition. The competition is more than flying in the performance zone.


So you want to overcome the organizational inertia and have a category where the lower performance guys can fly with the higher performance guys and maybe break even or win? The first hurdle is that maybe only a handful of the 700 competitors across the US are interested. Sure a lot of folks say it’s a good idea but how many have offered to sit on the committee to draft the rules.


The next hurdle is getting a chapter to staff and run an alternative format contest. Most chapters already put on one, regular format, contest each year and that is all that they can handle. Putting on a contest involves a surprising amount of work, starting several months in advance of contest weekend. So the chapter resources are already committed. My chapter was hosting two low quality contests each year. When I became Chapter President I convinced the chapter to put on one really good contest rather than two financially strained and poorly staffed contests. Everyone was really happy with the result. The chapter finances wound up in much better shape. Many people do not realize that it takes about 24 volunteers in addition to the pilots currently flying a competition category to run a contest. 5 grading teams of Judge, Assistant, Recorder, 3 at the Chief Judges table, scoring room staff, Registration staff, etc. It adds up to a surprising number of people, besides the group of pilots flying a category at any given moment. The more contests that a chapter tries to host in a year, the more unpaid volunteers they have to recruit. So the logistics of adding a new format contest to the planned traditional contest can be a problem. And we have the 700 competition pilots who already have plans and have to be convinced to add a new format contest to their schedule. So the contest schedule may already be full with traditional format contests.


Add a new category to an existing contest? 5 category contests already take all weekend. Adding another category with different rules is not likely to fit into the time we have for a contest. Many of us take 4 days to attend a contest, which can easily cost $1000 when you include hotel, rental car, fuel, registration, etc. Adding another category adds to the time and expense.


All of that said, it is worth trying new stuff and I can report that IAC 35 has been speaking with past and the current IAC President about this. So in October we plan to try a handicap format for a one day contest. First a one day contest means we will not fly 5 categories. We have decided to only fly the Sportsman category. IAC requires that we fly the Known program if we have a one day one flight contest. So we will all fly the 2014 Sportsman Known. Everyone is welcome, but we will use a handicap system to attempt to level the playing field.

Now how do you handicap an Unlimited pilot flying Sportsman so that the kid in a Decathlon feels that it is worthwhile for he or she to come and try to go home with a trophy? Not an easy formula to figure out.


The first determination we made was that the Decathlon will be the reference aircraft. Any pilot can fly a Decathlon and no handicap will be applied. We figure that if your daily driver is an Extra 330SC, stepping into a Decathlon for a day will have you far enough out of your regular rhythm to have you handicapped enough.


Next we decided that if you do bring your Extra 330SC to fly, we will apply a points penalty that is graduated depending on what your “regular” competition category is. This way we apply a handicap to the airplane-pilot pair. Our handicap schedule is; Intermediate pilots -75 pts; Advanced pilots -120 pts; Unlimited pilots -150 pts. This means that these pilots start with boundary penalties that total these point numbers. Now after the contest we will look at these values and see how we might need to adjust them for the next contest. I expect that the handicap values will need a few contests to work out.


And no, if you claim that you are an Extra driver but you will bring an Eagle and you should not be handicapped since the Eagle is not your daily driver, you still have the handicap applied since the Eagle is not the reference airplane for the contest.


So this experiment is intended to invite everyone to fly, encourage the new competitors by handicapping the more experienced pilot-airplane pairs, and get it all done in one day, bringing the cost of attending the contest way down. We hope that the new competitors will benefit from rubbing elbows with the more experienced competitors. And we will use the minimum number of volunteers. Some of the more experienced competitors like myself have volunteered to stay on the ground to make the contest go. Should be an interesting experiment. Feel free to try the idea yourself at the contest that you organize.


Best of luck,

Wes

N78PS

[flyrite]

Wes I appreciate your giving some history to frame how we got to where we are as an organization & why things are done the way that they are{categories, plane development, etc.} And I truly appreciate the "labor of love" of the people like yourself that through the years have invested your time talent & treasure so that guys like me can just show up & enjoy themselves.

And I would NEVER advocate for changing the current format or adding anymore administrative or time consuming endeavors to the current categorical structure such as adding another category or having a separate contest for the low performance planes. As I said the people like you putting these contests on are already doing great job. My contention is that we even the playing field as much as is possible. Which seems to be what you guys are planning for your sportsman only contest & also what Giles Henderson's article put forth. Which the article & your contest BTW....demonstrates an acknowledgement of the disparity.

So now that we finally at least agree that there is an unfair advantage, Let me make the assumption that you & I are having a friendly debate not about the past position on where the IAC has been on this issue{because we know that their use to be rules regarding this very issue} but my hopes for the present as well as the future of it. I will also make the assumption that your arguing for leaving things as they are & I have already assumed the task of arguing why there needs to be some tweaking.

So with the above assumptions established let me make some proposals that from my perspective would be very simple to implement & cause no additional burdens on CD's & staff nor would it require any changes to the present format or category system.



Give any "unlimited machine" so many contests or years of competition in the lower categories to develop their skills & then require them to move up till they get to the category that their plane was designed for...UNLIMITED...or...start handicapping them as you guys are doing for the sportsman only contest...or...handicap them based off the API differential of their plane if they don't want to move up. The latter would be best in my opinion. that's it.

By doing this you take away the advantage of the "Lifers" with the $$'s from parking year after year in a lower category. This would provide motivation to either move up ...or... save some money & buy a plane that doesn't cost so much & might also provide a lot more motivation for some intermediate guys to jump into advanced. But regardless of what it motivates competitors to "do or not do" it certainly would make the competitions much more fair & about "Skills Not Frills"!

To go back to your history lesson on the sport....Remember the guys of yesteryear in every country were designing planes to compete in unlimited...not the lower categories...The categorical system we have as you have pointed out in other posts was designed to be stepping stones up the ladder of skills to top out in unlimited. Never with the idea of getting an advantage in equipment over your competition year after year.

What happen back then was that the state sponsored countries with the will to throw $ at designing planes to give there pilots an advantage in performance did so...Well naturally as you said us bunch of enterprising capitalist had to meet the challenge. But what the IAC has done is to marry that sentiment to the rules{or lack of rules} here in the states under our capitalist system with the idea of whoever has the $ can buy an advantage & continue to use if they so desire!
I could make more points as to what I think the benefits would be for the sport as an overall, as well as address what I know some of the arguments against this would be. But I'm convinced the benefits would far outway any downsides!

Thanks for involving yourself in the "ETERNAL DEBATE" once again.

Tony

[WLIU]

I personally think that the solution is to encourage partnerships in higher performance aerobatic aircraft. Trying to "dumb down" categories to create "fairness" is much less interesting than trying to level the playing field by figuring out how to match like-minded and comparably skilled pilots to share ownership in one of the super-ships. We all want to fly the highest performance ship that we can muster the intestinal fortitude and pilot skills to get into. That is just our nature. Anything less is a compromise. So lets come up with a model partnership agreement, and create a program that has IAC chapters function as match makers to mentor pilots looking to own their own acro ship.

There is even a business opportunity separate from IAC here. Really experienced acro owners and mechanics might be able to offer aircraft management specific to aerobatic aircraft. I take care of the scheduling of maintenance for a partnership and the owners just have to show up and fly. Hmmmm......

I'd love to be a partner in a Staudacher, a Sukhoi, or an Extra 300S. Then we could stop complaining about our wealthier friends. Food for thought.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[flyrite]

I personally think that the solution is to encourage partnerships in higher performance aerobatic aircraft. Trying to "dumb down" categories to create "fairness" is much less interesting than trying to level the playing field by figuring out how to match like-minded and comparably skilled pilots to share ownership in one of the super-ships. We all want to fly the highest performance ship that we can muster the intestinal fortitude and pilot skills to get into. That is just our nature. Anything less is a compromise. So lets come up with a model partnership agreement, and create a program that has IAC chapters function as match makers to mentor pilots looking to own their own acro ship.

There is even a business opportunity separate from IAC here. Really experienced acro owners and mechanics might be able to offer aircraft management specific to aerobatic aircraft. I take care of the scheduling of maintenance for a partnership and the owners just have to show up and fly. Hmmmm......

I'd love to be a partner in a Staudacher, a Sukhoi, or an Extra 300S. Then we could stop complaining about our wealthier friends. Food for thought.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

Wes I guess that's one way to do it.....Hmmmmm...Lets move every pilot UP in plane performance to even out the disparities in performance instead of taking away the performance advantage of pilots with the same skills as the guys that are not flying the "superships".

I struggle to see how allowing a guy flying a supership designed for unlimited capabilities to have a set time period WITHOUT penalty's to develop their skills & then taking away their advantage is in anyway "dumbing down" the categories. We may all aspire to fly some other ship & some may move up in performance at some point in their flying {I did}.

But a lot of the active competitors never will & you can bet a lot of the guys flying the lower categories have showed up a contest & seen the Lifers in the superships in their category year after year & say to themselves ..."something ain't rite here". They may never verbalize it so it can be heard for whatever reason but the sentiment is there. I say this because I have had these conversations over the last 2 years. As well as being one of them obviously.

Listen... I don't know if anything in this economic climate will ever bring us back to the days when some of the regional contests had almost as much participation as the nationals...Maybe there's nothing that will change the participation in the sport...We may be at "critical mass" for the present climate...But I truly don't believe that continuing the direction in buying more performance to give you an advantage over your fellow competitors with the SAME SKILLS AS YOU & then parking in a lower category is going to encourage more involvement!


Take care
Tony

[WLIU]

Another way to incentivise and reward the pilots with lower budgets is to create a contest within the contest. The actual true "One Design" is the single seat Pitts. The DR-107 population is slowly increasing, but it has a long way to go to catch up to the huge flock of S-1's out there. We could create a "Curtis Pitts Trophy" to be awarded at every regional contest. We could solicit that the IAC database keep track of the standings for the Pitts trophies that are awarded. We could have regional recognition of the "Top Pitts Pilot" at the end of each season like the IAC Regional Series that is under-recognized today. That would reward the guys flying the $40K S-1's who might be outscored by guys flying Edge's, but will provide recognition and encourage friendly competition within their peer group. When the DR-107 community reaches similar critical mass, there could be a Dan Rihn Trophy.

All that is needed to do the above is organizing a sponsor who will put up about $4K per year for trophies and some data processing volunteer help.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[ssmdive]

Please read where this thread went - It went down hill.

http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?4448-Fair-unknowns

But I agree… It seems that as an organization the IAC has little interest in competition for anyone that does not have a supership.

For example, I just came back from the Skydiving Nationals. I just won the Advanced class (I also won it in 2003, this year I did it as a player coach). I am not eligible to compete in Advanced again till 2019 unless I am the only member of a 4way team. This prevents people camping out in that class year after year.

I am one guy that is not sure he will compete again even though I have a ship that is very capable of Sportsman and I am flying the known to get better as much as possible.

Dan Rhin's idea of a one design contest is something I would love. Don't want to buy or build a third plane for acro and the class does not exist.
Wes's idea of a Pitts contest is something I would love. Really, I like it but the class does not exist.
Wes's idea of a group buying a plane… Again a great idea, but I have to buy yet another plane.

The trend with all these great ideas is it requires the individuals to do something, and not the IAC to do something.

What is the IAC doing to encourage aerobatics? I have seen very little effort in attracting new pilots.

[flyrite]

Welcome to the "Eternal Debate" ssmdive...You know you would think because it keeps coming up that it might behoove the Powers that be to at least jump in to discuss...dismiss...lend credence to...Tell why this or that won't work & just generally make guys like us at least feel like our voice is being heard.

And to that point I shot an e-mail to Mike Heuer yesterday & asked him when he got through with this weeks nationals would he peruse this thread & maybe give his 2 cents worth. He responded & I quote....I will give a look.

So maybe he will jump in sometime next week, We'll see.

But to that point of the membership being able to have forum to discuss issue's like this ... I guess most use the "Acro Exploder" which is great if you figure how to post on it...But...I've always assumed that this is the official EAA web-site...Which means it's the official IAC web-site & through the years I've never seen one president or board member{unless I've missed it} get actively involved with any of these threads...Huh, go figure!!! I do appreciate Guys like Wes & others that participated in the "Fair Unknowns" & this thread for making the arguments for changeing nothing, But..They like me & you are just lowly members. Although they are the guys doing a lot of the work to put on the contests & I would assume they are afraid that messing with the status quo might affect turnout. And rightfully so

Tony

[ssmdive]

But to that point of the membership being able to have forum to discuss issue's like this ... I guess most use the "Acro Exploder" which is great...But...I've always assumed that this is the official EAA web-site...Which means it's the official IAC web-site & through the years I've never seen one president or board member{unless I've missed it} get actively involved with any of these threads...Huh, go figure!!!

I do appreciate Guys like Wes & others that participated in the "Unfair Unknowns" & this thread for making the arguments for changeing nothing, But..They like me & you are just lowly members

The lack of action at all by the IAC is why I have let my membership expire. People like Wes mean well, and like I said many of the *individuals* I have met have been great. But the IAC as an organization seems uninterested to even listen. I saw/see zero benefit in being a member, I only joined last time because I wanted to be a competitor.

[RetroAcro]

Wes's idea of a Pitts contest is something I would love.

I think Wes was talking about a scoring system within a contest that recognized the top scoring Pitts pilot across categories, much like the Grassroots award we currently have. One of the various problems with "One Design" categories involving head-to-head competition between similar types is what difficulty level do you make it? A Pitts can compete in Primary through Advanced competitively. Make it Intermediate level of difficulty, and it will be too challenging for many and too simple for others. What you really need is an entire "One Design" contest with multiple categories and levels of difficulty. You'd be doing good to get 10 similar types to show up at a regional contest. And then once you divide these ten pilots between categories (Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced for example), you're going to be left with categories of three pilots. Not very competitive.

IMO, all this talk of unfairness revolves around two scenarios - 4 cylinders (Pitts and One Designs) in the Advanced category, and very low performing airplanes in Sportsman. Primary is a rank beginner category, and is essentially a way for a competitor to get their foot in the door and get some contest experience. The piloting abilities at this level are so inconsistent that it really doesn't matter what aircraft type is flown. Maybe something could be done in Sportsman. You, 'ssmdive' brought up that 'other thread', but one of my remaining problems with much of what you state is that I'm just flat not convinced that there are significant numbers of Citabria type pilots who would all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and compete in a "fair" Sportsman category just because of rule changes. There's just no evidence that trying to pull them in would produce anything more than a handful across the country. Are significant numbers of Sportsman pilots unhappy about Extra 300's being allowed? I don't know, but I somewhat doubt it. Look at who has won Nationals the last couple years. If anything, some may rather see a limitation on pilot experience in Sportsman than a limitation on the type of aircraft flown. Is that a good idea? How do you implement that? Would it just cause pilots who have been around a long time supporting the sport to just say screw it? Lots of hard questions and no easy answers.

So to continue - In Intermediate, you must fly an airplane that folks are generally willing to snap. These days, this generally excludes Citabria and Decathlons and leaves the airplanes that are perfectly able to meet the performance requirements of the Intermediate category.

Again, we see the issue resurface in Advanced where stock 180 hp Pitts (and One Designs) may struggle at times just to get through certain figures in a sequence, where that MX breezes through it. In Unlimited, it's pretty much all 6-cylinder monoplanes anyway, so the issue is moot here.

So what's the magic recipe for making IAC more attractive to current and prospective members? I would sure like to know. So would the board members. I can guarantee that statements such as "IAC only cares about the super ships" is untrue. As I've said before, I'd love to see some "One Design" contests for Decathlon and RV types. I'd put in effort to make it happen - if people would actually show up. I've organized and run six contests. I know what it takes, and I'd volunteer to run something like this. Competition in any form (even catered to them) is a non starter for over 99% of RV pilots. Try rounding up a bunch of Citabria pilots. I would be interested in seeing Pitts categories, but again there's the reality of participation, structuring, and that of "one design" participation diluting participation under the current structure. IAC needs more pilots, but we sure can't afford to lose the few we have now.

I imagine there are definite ways to improve the sport, but I also imagine that our biggest obstacle by far is the economy, diminishing pilot population, increased cost, fewer and fewer acro/tailwheel operators, fewer airport kids, and fewer kids who see flying as "cool" and something they'd like to do.

I'm not some establishment type. I'm all for improvement. Most of these types of discussions are short on actual concrete, thought-out solutions. Good solutions require quite a bit of experience, knowledge, and wisdom about this sport. I wish I had all that. For now, I'll take satisfaction in showing how little stock Pitts' can stack up against the monoplanes in Advanced. :-)

Eric