At 12:15 AM 12/08/2001 -0500, you wrote: >For what it is worth. The current format is good, but not the best. It is >great for a lot of people, and it is bad for a lot. yes the people attend >every year, but like Darryl said, change should not be a bad thing.
True. (Bear with me here.) >The origional concept was brought up because the FAI events in all of RC are >suffering. Using soaring as an example, look at the schedule. We have 2 >days for FAI events, and both really need 2 days to have a "real" contest. >All other RC events are having the same problem. While yes, the popularity >of the FAI events may never increase, they also are the pinnacle and >international recognition events. Darryl and Joe are not respected world >wide because of their Visalia performances, nor even Joe's multiple IHLGF >wins, but because of their combined awesome performances in the FAI tasks >(F3b and F3j). Many of the top and well respected glider pilots are known >for their FAI performances, and hopefully many more. True, the world is bigger than just the good ol' USA. >The simple thing is that the FAI community in the US is slipping. There are >fewer and fewer contests, and fewer and fewer possibilities for new pilots >to enter them. This is concerning many of the executive and competition >folks on the AMA. It should be a concern for everyone. Was there ever the kind of participation you infer, here in the US? In my 18 some years of following soaring, I don't recall ever seeing a strong (read large) FAI presence in soaring. Teams seem to be made up of the best pilots who demonstrated their skills in our current events. The pilots made the team through hard work and practice for each FAI discipline and then placing well in the team trials. Not everyone has the time, money, skills, resources and desire to fly FAI events. >The simple thing is >that the AMA would like to develop a way to increase that participation in >some way, and a suggestion was to have a revolving FAI/non-FAI NATs >schedule. For good or bad, this is a possibility and one that should be >investigated. The other thing is that in many cases, soaring specifically, >there are only a very limited amount of FAI events in the country. For F3b >that is the Team selections (every other year), the NATS (one day), and 2-3 >other events scattered around the ocuntry (Chicago, Az or NM, and Denver >last year). F3j is similar with the TS, NATS and 1-2 other events if that. >How many unlimited contests are there? How about 2m? RES? NOS? All >vastly exceed that possibility. The NATS is one of the FEW places to have >an FAI event that has the potential of pulling a national crowd, yet having >it on only 2 dats (1 F3b, and 1 F3j) will never attract a large >crowd...ever. Participating in F3J and spectating F3B leads me to believe the difficulty of running these type of contests are far more demanding than setting up a winch, tossing out a landing tape and having a typical TD contest (or, for us Midwesterners, a couple of winches and flying MoM.). >The simple thing, and please don't misread this, is that the NATS is simply >a contest. It really is not a "national championship" in the terms that >most sports or competitions use. It really is a fun and enjoyable week of >RC soaring (and other RC events) that people come and participate in yearly. >And don't get me wrong, winning this is a GREAT accomplishment, it deserves >all the prestige and honor that goes with it. But there are plenty of >possibilities to have Unlimited, RES, 2M, HL, and NOS contests. Many people >on the ESL do it EVERY weekend! But there are not many chances to have good >FAI contests and by restricting them to 1 day per event, you keep that from >ever happening. Points are well taken but, how do we incorporate more flying into an established week of NATS contests? As I posted earlier, maybe it's the time for those who FAI is important to, and if that means AMA also, then step up to the plate and organize the events for what you desire. Again, maybe it's time to clarify what is the NATS' mission and objective. >Jason Werner Thanks for your comments! Jim Carlton RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
