unfair

[flyrite]

Bump>>>>>>>>>>>>>bump>>>>>>>>>>>>bump>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stay tuned after the next issue of the magazine!!

Take care
Tony

[Eric Anderson]

I read the article "Unlimited...limited" and mostly agreed with Tony. So I hijacked the idea and posted a paraphrased version on the Biplane Forum where I thought it would receive a favorable following. But before I relate the gist of the responses there, here's where I'm coming from: Warrenton, VA '13 was my first contest. The first time I ever saw a box was there with Eric Sandifer on the handheld coaching me through the Sportsman Known. My first volunteer job was to record for Tony later that day. I just don't see myself flying Advanced. At my age and negative G tolerance, Intermediate offers more than enough to keep me on my toes. So I don't know why I care. But I do. Maybe it's because I still appreciate that four minutes of coaching from Eric and now want to watch him compete and thrive in his new category. The same holds true for Jason Flood, my first and best friend in this sport. I see real logic in carving out Advanced as the pinnacle of 4 cylinder competition and Unlimited as the pinnacle of competition overall. Without this wall between the two, the idea of international Advanced competition seems oddly wasteful to me. It's basically spending hundreds of thousands of dollars sending two teams flying the same same planes to do basically the same sequences. But that's just me. Having limited my tailslides and outside snaps to 4000 AGL maybe I just don't appreciate the giant chasm between the categories.

As for the response over at the biplane forum, it was surprisingly hostile to Tony's idea. The resistance boiled down to:
1. It's the pilot, not the plane that competes.
2. If you are in it for the trophy, you're in it for all the wrong reasons.
3. Limiting or handicapping unnecessarily complicates an already low attendance sport.

[Eric Anderson]

So my reply is this (copied and pasted from elsewhere, sorry):

If this idea can't win over a forum of biplane pilots it will obviously never have a hope of attracting more than a small fraction of the IAC--especially given that similar restrictions have been tried and dropped before.

How about this (the trial balloon ascends...):

Design each Known and Unknown (for applicable categories) with a particular type(s) in mind. Something like

Primary = Citabria
Sportsman = Decathalon
Intermediate = Pitts S-2A
Advanced = Giles 202, 1D
Unlimited = Unlimited

The benchmark types will be published in the Contest Rules each year and all finalist sequence submissions will be test-flown in the appropriate type.

[WLIU]

This guidance already exists, but it is the IAC Policy and Procedures doc(s) which very few members read. On the IAC web site. And I have no idea why it is buried in the P&P.

You are welcome to submit a rules change proposal in advance of the July 1 deadline that offers an edit to the rule book to move that text over from the P&P. Please send to Brian Howard, Chair of the Rules Committee.

Thanks for engaging in the discussion.

Best of luck,

Wes

[Eric Anderson]

Hi Wes, I did as you suggested above on that (shhh!) other forum. It's a rough draft and I wouldn't dare consider submission without talking to friends who, unlike me, actually have a history competing. Plus it has the potential of undercutting Tony so I want to avoid any overstep on my part.

[ssmdive]

As for the response over at the biplane forum, it was surprisingly hostile to Tony's idea. The resistance boiled down to:
1. It's the pilot, not the plane that competes.
2. If you are in it for the trophy, you're in it for all the wrong reasons.
3. Limiting or handicapping unnecessarily complicates an already low attendance sport.

You just boiled this whole thread down as well.

[allan f]

This is sounding a lot like the arguments that went on in the late ‘90s when the S-1S was being driven out of Unlimited by the unstoppable desire of would-be World Team members to fly CIVA-style sequences at regional contests. As a veteran of those wars, I think the same thing is likely to happen to Advanced. If you really want to keep Advanced safe for four cylinder airplanes, now is the time to fight that battle, before most of them are gone from the category and there’s no one left to fight for them.

I’d like to address the argument that you can always compete in Intermediate if Advanced requires more performance than your plane can muster. I think most competition pilots fall on a linear scale. At one extreme are those who want sequences that can be flown easily in their airplane so they can put in a dozen practice flights to get to where they see minimal errors from inside the plane and are ready to do what they really like - going to contests where they love competing and the social and volunteering aspects of the sport. At the other extreme are pilots such as myself, who like practicing. For practicing to be fun for 40+ flights a year there must be some real challenge to the sequences. Contests are fun too, of course, but mainly they’re for checking your flying progress and competing. The social aspects aren’t enough better than a fly-in breakfast to justify going to a competition.

For most of the past 14 years I’ve been flying unlimited sequences in my modified S-1S for the challenge of it. There’s been no point at all in going to a contest, because of the likelihood of an unflyable Unknown. Practicing Advanced wouldn’t have been enough fun for me to bother keeping on flying aerobatics. While the numbers were small, there is no doubt that people on my side of the scale were driven out of competition by the demise of affordable airplanes in Unlimited. When affordable airplanes are driven out of Advanced, I predict the pilots who can’t get what they want out of the sport by dropping down to Intermediate will be a more substantial loss to the sport.

There’s another type of loss to the sport that’s less visible and difficult to measure, but potentially involves larger numbers of pilots. For someone with the innate talent to fly Unlimited or what Advanced is becoming, it takes two or three years to get through Sportsman and Intermediate in a basic airplane. Pilots on my side of the scale need the challenge of difficult-for-them sequences to stay in the sport. When the step up to Advanced comes to require a $100,000 airplane, the number of people who will make that step instead of quitting the sport will be much smaller than if a $35,000 Pitts is all they need.

[wyoranch]

Well said!

[WLIU]

There is a rules proposal brewing elsewhere that would incorporate FAI sporting code section 6, part 1 4.2.2.2.e into IAC rules. That might help our Advanced competitor friends.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[jtoml]

I saw Tony's article in Sport Aerobatics, and have just joined the forum. Lots of comments, and I haven't read them all. I'm a regional judge and one time competitor.

I think the easiest way to have the lower performing airplanes score better in the higher categories is to change the scoring rules. I think the interruption penalties should be fairly nominal, or eliminated altogether. A lower performance airplane can climb for some extra height without taking a big scoring hit. Yes, a flight looks better without interruptions, and the proper place for it is in the presentation score.