What are you flying?

[RetroAcro]

Nice Hiperbipe. Did you build it?

I would offer you a character building exercise. There are lots of "good" aerobatic pilots out there. "Good" is a very fuzzy adjective. The Hyperbipe is a very capable IAC Sportsman level aircraft. I invite you to participate in an IAC Aerobatic Contest and see how "Good" measures up against your fellow pilots. We all go through the process of posting our first score and finding out that our first try at "Good" is a lot sloppier than that of our peers. Anyone can make the airplane swap ends and call it a loop. But to get a really good score you have to fly a wind corrected vertical circle, without veriations in roundness or wandering off heading.

At the end of each of our first contest, each of us gets to decide whether we really want to fly precise "Good" aerobatics, or whether flopping around is good enough.

I encourage you and everyone reading this post to move beyond mere "Good".

My personal favorite aerobatic figure is a rolling circle. Four coordinated and continuous rolls inside while changing heading 360 degrees, while holding altitude and trying to arrive back on the original heading at the exact moment that the fourth roll reaches wings level (Thanks Leo!). How about you?

See you at the box.

Wes
N89PS

+1, very well said. Wes is subtly challenging you to increase your skills - it's not necessarily a question of ability. Two different things. I've known a number of "good" pilots who have gotten into competition acro after doing largely self-taught acro on their own for years. Those first ground critiquing sessions can be very humbling. As Wes mentioned, even the first contest experience after quite a bit of time preparing and practicing can also be. For those who are not quickly turned off by the initial ego deflation quickly take their skills to new levels. It's all in the interest of the challenge and satisfaction associated with improving and learning to fly with more precision. But you have to be the type of pilot who DOES care about this, otherwise it's probably not for you. Not making any judgments, but some just like flopping around, "hotdogging", or just lazy fun flying, which is fine. Aerobatics is very easy to do. Doing them with a high level of precision is not. I think ego may prevent some folks (who may have flown recreational aerobatics for years) from getting involved with competition. They may have never had any training beyond the basics, and definitely never had any expert ground critiquing. They might feel they are pretty "hot", but deep down are uncomfortable with having their skills measured in such a public way against pilots they know are already experienced with contest flying.

For those who feel this way, I can only say that the real competition is with yourself, not with other pilots. Many folks who have never flown a contest obsess about how well they will do, how uneasy they are flying in front of judges and all their peers, and how they may not like the "competition" atmosphere. Basically, they take it way too seriously before actually experiencing what contests are really like. You'll get over this after your first flight in the box. What contests are really like is different from what many expect. Everyone is friendly and welcoming and eager to help you. There's practically no competitive juice BETWEEN the pilots. It's just like golf, you're competing against yourself. And what keeps most pilots involved becomes less about the "competition flying", but the friends you make, the camaraderie, and the chance to spend a long weekend hanging out and flying with like-minded folks. It's really a small community. For folks who have serious interest in aerobatics, I've never understood not getting involved, given how few and far between real acro nuts are.

So Hiperbiper, there are two contests near you each year - IAC 24's Sherman, TX contest - about an hour flight for you, and IAC 3's Grenada, MS contest - maybe an hour and a half. Everybody loves seeing unusual types at contests, and yours would be very capable in Sportsman. You might look at the sequence and think nothing of it, but I guarantee you that flying the figures well enough to get good scores, INSIDE the box, and presented well in the box is quite a challenge. I'm sure you have the ability, but nobody has a chance at flying well without experienced help from the ground. I guarantee you there will be many things to tighten up that you did not (and could not) realize from flying on your own. I think a lot of folks get a little bored doing recreational aerobatics on their own, because they've lost the ability to find new things to improve on.

Eric
IAC 19