Conference vmszoo::rc

    FYI this is the guy that was second to Charlie Watt at the Sayre comp.
    yesteday.
    
    E.

    Eric,
    
        I wish I had known about this contest as I would have liked
    to watch the HTA in action.  Did you meet Terry Terrenoire?
    I believe that club is really into pattern, providing a great
    entrance into this aspect of the hobby.
    
    Believe it or not they sponsor an electric funfly annually.  I 
    attended last year and really enjoyed it.  If memory serves me,
    the field is located at the top of a rather high hill?  Is this
    the field where the contest was flown?
    
    
                                                       regards,
    
                                                       Jim
    
    

    No it was on the local, read Sayre, grass airport. I did not see any 
    hills. It was relatively flat. There were hills to the side and far away, 
    (a valley's length), behind and infront of us.
    
    I believe we know Terry. He sells pattern stuff from his station-wagon!, 
    right?.
    
    Regards,
    
    E.                                 

    Re: -1
    
    Ok, I was confused.  The Aeroguidance Society operates out of Endicott,
    New York from a field on top of a hill.  Terry Terrenoire is an officer
    in that club and very active in pattern.  Sayre is down the road a
    little bit from Endicott.  
    
                                                    Regards,
    
                                                    Jim

    Don't worry confusion comes with age!.
    
    E.

    
    Jim's club does sound a bit like ours. Except most people are not that
    much aged. But it takes Very much time to convince them to do any kind
    of competition. Last year it was one fun flight event that I could get
    them to do. This year we will have an HLG competition. But don't ask
    how slow everything goes. 
    Everytime in Winter when I suggest to organize an internal competition
    I get the answer "great, WE do it". (That means our club's officers and
    myself as a helper). Then when times come to act it takes forever to
    get them on their toes. 
    Generally I miss the foccus as well. The HLG contest is one light at
    the horizon, The Gremlin maybe the other. But they are sooooo 
    slooooowwww.......zzzzzzzzzz.
    
    Bernd
    

    An area of "focus" that would interest me and could include all
    members of my club would be pylon racing.
    
    I would like to run a once a month race to get people acquainted with
    flying around a closed course competing only against themselves
    and the clock.
    
    Two poles would be set up 150 meters apart, each contestant would fly
    10 laps around the course.  Only one person would be on the course
    and a stop watch would be used to time the event(no mid-airs).  The
    race would be open to all types and sizes of planes(no classes) to
    encourage participation.  At the end of the year the individuals
    times would be averaged and the "club champ" for that season would
    be announced.
    
    Hopefully each person would improve their times by improved flying
    and/or the construction of good plane.
    
    The "focus" of a task would result in improved skills and control
    of the aircraft and hopefully a hell of a lot of fun and camerardie.
    
    Ultimately people would build new planes(boy we could use some of that)
    or even have fun designing their own enhancements to improve their
    times.  
    
    The "focus" in my club is currently on mall shows and picnics, while
    this is valuable, I think we need a group who wants to focus on flying,
    building, and designing.
    
    While the mention of the word "race" scares a lot of people, I don't
    think it need be a scary event.  I think once people get over the
    "stigma" they would like it and look forward to race day!
    
    
                                                      Regards,
    
                                                      Jim
    
    
    
    
    

    The CRRC club in Massachusetts tried real hard to do pylon races for
    several years. They finally gave up on it (I think... some diehards
    still may want to resurrect it). Here are my observations:
    
    	* The point of a race is to win. If you have a wide range of planes
    	  in the competition, it's the equipment that makes the biggest 
    	  difference, not the flying skill. So, to make it fair to all...
    
    	* You settle on one type of plane for the races. In our case, it
    	  was the Scooter II, a nice, cheap, good flying little plane. Just
    	  need a K&B .20 engine. The club elves even hit the shop one night and
    	  produced a couple dozen kits, selling them for $20. How much 
    	  easier can you make it for members? Well, I suppose you could
    	  BUILD the planes for them too. So, everything is equal, right?
    
    	* Wrong. Chris didn't install rudder control in his, which means
    	  it's lighter ==> faster. Someone else seemed to figure out how
    	  to fiddle with the cursed K&B .20 engine and got it to scream. I
    	  even heard one guy mumble that mine was sanded too much, the
    	  lower drag and weight giving it an unfair advantage. (C'mon, get
    	  real.) In short, I never heard so much grouching, moaning, and
    	  harumphing. Hey, this isn't for the world championship, let's
          just fly the darn things!
    
    	* They changed the engine to something a little easier to deal
          with, the OS .25. Fine with me, I go out and buy a .25. I must
    	  admit, it is a big improvement. Everybody agrees this is a good
    	  solution.
    
        * Who shows up at the pylon races? About 6 people. The same 6, give
          or take a couple, who show up at ALL the events. Not exactly a 
          bustling crowd.
    
    	* You need helpers to run the contest. At a minimum: a timekeeper,
          a caller for each competitor flying in the heat, a caller at the
          far pylon for each competitor in the air, and probably a CD to 
    	  oversee it all.
    
    	* You need equipment to run the contest. A safety screen for the
    	  callers at the far pylon is a must. Not to mention the pylons. 
          An array of red and green lights is better than arm waving, but
    	  not required. And you have to store this stuff someplace. And 
    	  maintain it. Not a big job, but SOMEONE has to do it...
    
    	* They planned to run races once a month. Ok, so that's a half a
          day set aside for the racers. But we only get the field on
          weekends, and a year ago it was more like 2 weekends a month, so
    	  now half a day is a significant portion of the available
          schedule. So now the grumbling starts again. Some people don't
    	  want to race, they just want to fly. Matter of fact, MOST people.
    
    I guess you get the picture. At each meeting, they would discuss the
    new, revised pylon racing rules. They tried to make it fair, but some
    people went out of their way to find potential loopholes, and nitpicky
    problems. These people would spend 20 minutes at the meeting shooting
    arrows into the race organizers, then they wouldn't show up at the races!
    Ack! 
    
    I finally lost interest out of general disgust. Is this a familiar 
    scenario?
    
    Dave
                                                                      

    Re: -1
    
    Dave,
    
        I've got to admit what you are saying would probably happen at my
    club also.  If people had to build a certain design plane and
    actually buy a particular motor(Egads!), I'm sure participation
    would be very limited.  
    
    I had hoped that allowing people to fly anything would encourage 
    participation, with people trying to improve their own times
    rather than directly competing with others.  Heck, I would fly
    a 7 cell electric and could care less if my times were slower
    than somebody flying a .61 pattern plane.
    
    I'm just bored of sport flying where the biggest challenge is
    not getting mid-aired by a trainer!  I mean how many times can
    you take off and fly around in circles with a mundane plane
    before you just get bored?  Don't people want a little 
    excitement/challenge?
    
    My true interest lies in F3B/F3E/F3F/F3I competition which offers
    no opportunities in this part of the country.  I don't care for
    funfly events, so I thought a bush league pylon race might be
    fun to compete in.  I think an impromptu pattern event would be even
    harder to run/organize.
    
    Really, the old men/leaders of my club are a terribly uninspiring
    bunch.  Preferring to yak about the "good old days" of R/C when
    escapements and such were the norm.  Often warning newcomers/beginners
    about the dangers of flying anything other than a fat winged trainer.
    Deridding new ideas and doing very little flying, they manage quite
    well to keep a boring aura about the field.  I can't imagine a club
    with a bunch of guys in their 20's remaining this stagnant!
    
    How the heck do these other clubs manage to get cooperation in
    their endevears(pattern, pylon, etc.)?  All I can think is the
    club leaders push in this direction and the timid beginners
    tend to follow.
    
    
                                                 Regards,
    
    
                                                 Jim
    
     
    
    

    Dave forgot the famous battle of the baffles. I was treasurer of the
    club at that time and I could not believe the fights that the club had
    over the OS muffler mute insert and baffle.
    
    Joke is tha tyears later I used these baffles in mt Gremlins. The 25FP
    gets better performnance than the other guys without them because the
    expansion chamber is now bigger!..
    
    
    We tried to do grem-pylon racing once. Still can feel the heat....
    
    E.
    
    BTW Dave, your Skootah was to pretty to race. Rule #345.7 section 3
    para B for BS!.

A lot of the clubs that actively support events have a motivated core 
of people interested in the same thing. My club in Ware has your 
problem. Nobody wants to do stuff but then they whine when no events 
happen (or whine when somebody schedules a half day event and they 
might want to fly that day, 3 months away). We have a lot of people 
that the world revolves around.

A single person can't push an entire club in a specific direction. You 
can convert a few over and then work together as a group to keep the 
ball rolling. Doing something "unpopular" generally means motivating 
yourself and resigning ytourself to travelling to compete and competing 
against a stopwatch most times. Dennis Phelan has this problem in 
Connecticut with F3B. He still goes out to practice but it requires a 
support team to actually setup and run the course.

(unpopular is used above to mean outside the clubs mainstream interest)

The most effective method is to find similarly interested people and 
make the trip to participate with them. I discovered glider people in 
my own back yard at contests 150 miles from home 8^)

    I also went through the beginnings of the CRRC pylon thing with Dave. 
    It was a mess.  I would love to do the racing but it takes quite a bit
    of work to organize it and you never get enough members interested to
    do it right.  The rules have to be very rigid if you want to have a one
    design class.  Any deviations must be disallowed or everyone has to go
    do the deviation to be competitive.  I will pass on pylon racing even
    though I would love the challange of doing it!
    	Combat on the other hand is easy to organize and run and the rules
    are a little less important.  It is also fun and you don't need a race
    course, pylon judges, callers, etc.  We have had a bunch of combat
    competitions and there has been no squabbling about unfair advantages
    and there has been a different winner almost every time.  There is an
    element of luck involved that keeps things interesting.
    	I like Pattern but there are some drawbacks.  I do not like to fly
    my pattern ship when there are many other flyers at the field.  It's
    impossible to practice while trying to keep an eye on the less
    experienced pilots ziping around on the edge of control.  I'm torn
    between being an instructor and being a serious pattern flyer because I
    don't get enough time to practice.  I find myself making it a point to
    be at the field when noone else is there to practice.  I realize that
    this is a problem that I have to deal with as an active club member. 
    The ideal situation would be if I could fly all I wanted and still have
    time to instruct and help the less experienced members.  I don't want
    to give that up and become a club outcast just to satisfy my urge to
    practice Pattern.
    
    Charlie
    

    Jim,
    
    there are more ways to miss the target...
    
    One local club here is in Bad W�rishofen, they have probably one of the
    nicest flying fields in Germany. Long tar runway, great protection
    fences for spectators, trees far off, flat, nice house with tower,
    camping facilities, parking lots. They do run events like German
    Semi-Scale championship, Ducted fan championships etc., and they do it
    in a professional manner. Contests are very well run and have lots of
    interesting guests, usually international (Switzerland, Poland, UK,
    Denmark etc.). Just great.
    
    I've also been there a couple of times on 'normal' weekends and was
    heavily disappointed. Usually, there are about 3 cars there, with
    planes in them, and the 'to-be-pilots' have a beer in the clubhouse. I
    guess that the club has a lot of doctors in them (Bad W�rishofen is a
    cure-town, can you say that? People are sent there by their
    doctors/health insurance for 4 weeks of special treatments). This leads
    to steep fees (all the facilities need to be paid for). They require a
    lot of money and worktime from their members, and the everyday flying
    is not very inspiring for me. For what I want to do, I'd prefer Bernd's
    club and field where you always find someone flying and willing to help
    out or having a nice chat.
    
    Men can screw up either way...
    
    Oh boy, I had intended to encourage you, sorry...
    
    Hartmut

Well, at the Keighley & District MAC we have a fairly full calendar of 
competition, and many of the clubs members participate. We have fun fly events, 
building comps, thermal, slope soaring, power, control line (oops!), you name 
it. Most of the competitions score towards a cup donated by the family of a late 
member, with a junior and senior winner announced at the year end. We also have 
lots of really fun comps, like an indoor chuck glider event at a recent club 
meeting. The standard was amazingly high! (ten flights each, and if you added 
all my times together I still didn't beat the winning single flight!).

All the comps are organised by members, with one committee member keeping track 
of what goes on.

We concentrate hard on the FUN. I once heard someone say that they wouldn't 
enter a comp because they had no chance of winning. This attitude needs to be 
stamped on HARD. If you only enter to win, then if you don't you won't have a 
good time, so you won't enter again...... 

I think that at club level we need to remember that the object here is 
enjoyment. Nobody flies RC as a chore surely? The competitions I attend are a 
damn' good laugh, and we should aim for this in my opinion.

OK, off soap box!

Cheers

Nigel

    Most of the clubs around here are not competition oriented.  The
    typical member is a sunday flyer of moderate skill who is content
    pushing his plane around the sky.  We have less than a 10% turnout for
    any competition like a funfly or a contest.  I would personally prefer
    a competition oriented club with all members being expert flyers but
    that just isn't the way it is.  It's very hard to organize an event
    unless you have enough members interested enough to participate in the
    planning and the execution.  I ran the club's funflies for three years
    and I finally got tired of doing it.
    
    Charlie
    

    I guess the "problem" is not limited to my club.  Reading all the
    publications gets me real excited about doing/trying some things,
    but that is not reality.  
    
    My club is 90% Sunday/sport flyers who as Charlie says "are on the
    verge of control" which is very disconcerting when you are on the
    flight line with your F3A, F3E, scale, etc. ship.  When a fellow
    member steps up to the line with a hot ship or a new plane I make
    a point not to fly because I know the pilot is probably nervous
    or will have "his hands full" with his P-38 or whatever.  They
    don't need the distraction of other planes in the air, plus I 
    enjoy watching competent flyers with interesting ships.  I think
    if some of the beginners(many with 10+ years experience) did a little
    more watching they might learn a few things.
    
    Some of the previous replies hinted that competition takes the fun
    out of flying.  I don't think it necessarily has to, it's really 
    a personal attitude you take towards the event.  I actually think
    it is a maturing experience to take a few risks in life rather than
    languishing forever in the safe and familiar(yes Telemaster flyers
    build a pattern plane!).  Think of yourself as a winner for at least
    having the guts to take the risk, even if you finish poorly in the
    standings.  That is what I liked about Terry Tombaugh, even though
    he usually finished in the middle of the pack or worse in his glider
    endeavors, he at least was out there doing it, meeting good people,
    and learning a lot.  This is what competition is all about.  If you
    have a win at all costs mentality, that is ok to, just be prepared 
    not to make too many friends.
    
    All I can conclude is the average flyer must have encountered some
    real jerks in competition settings or is afraid of "making a fool of
    myself" because they sure are turned off by an organized event.  I 
    consider my club members to be my allies and partners not my enemies,
    so an internal club event should be fun.
    
    The fact that my club offers a social membership for 1/2 the cost
    of a flying membership baffles me.  Who the heck would want to belong
    to a club where they have no active participation?  Heck you can hear
    all the hot air and war stories without paying!
    
    
                                                  Regards,
    
                                                  Jim
    
    

The social membership is probably there to offer the newsletter to 
those ex-fliers no longer capable of participating fully. It wouldn't 
surprise me if there was no checking for AMA membership (which 
shouldn't be required if there are no flight privs)

Competition is great and it's nice to be able to go out with the goal 
of being "not last". I've learned quite a bit by being out there. I've 
also learned quite a bit by going to the field with a particular task 
to master. Ajai was the best example where he went out and did touch 
and goes until the cows came home. I've done the same thing by 
constantly flying against the stopwatch or practicing spot landings. 
I compete against myself and try to better my average times from day 
to day.

My power flying is similar and I generally try to push my personal 
envelope. I don't go out and actively compete other than to try to 
support my clubs events by participating but I still enjoy "blowing 
off steam" by flying low inverted passes or some new manuever.

    Many of the "sunday flyers" in our club just don't have the time to
    devote to the hobby.  (or choose not to devote the time)  They fly
    infrequently and never develop much skill as a result.  Some fly more
    frequently but just don't want to put pressure on themselves in a
    competition environment.  Getting more into competition has changed the
    hobby for me.  I like to push myself to do better and that's what the
    competitions do.  How you place is part of the measurement of
    improvement so winning is a goal but not a requirement for success.  I
    really enjoy the social aspect of the competitions and I would not go
    to a contest solo.
    
    Charlie
    

    Competition flying is for those who can fly and who need a bit more? 
    
    It is hard enough to fly without adding all of the pressures and model
    breaking dangers of a fun-fly.
    
    Consider a club as a micro section of the world. How many people drive
    and how many race cars?.
    
    Compare that to how many compete in a club and we are ahead of the
    numbers.
    
    :-)
    
    E.                                                                  

    The author of the letter which sparked this note(Todd Sheehan) showed
    up at the field last night for the first time this year.  There was a
    larger than usual contingent because a meeting had been scheduled to
    discuss this year's Picnic.
    
    Todd brought the pattern ship he his competing with this year and
    put in some real impressive flights.  At the end of the night one
    guy came up to him and said he was going to compete in his first
    pattern contest(novice class, with his telemaster) and another said
    he was so impressed with Todd's ship he was going to finish up the
    low wing symmetrical wing plane he has been working on for 3 years!
    
    The rest of the guys had the same trainers they have flown for the past
    3 years, with only a couple exceptions(FLybaby & Waco bipe).  The 3
    club leaders brought the following:
    
                     #1 - didn't bring a plane
                     #2 - didn't bring a plane
                     #3 - Golden Oldie Biplane with a Snoopy doll that
                          comes out with a parachute and a club banner
                          to tow around.
    
    It's time to return the club to the flyers!  If Todd was a "leader"
    in this club along with a couple of other younger(open minded) guys
    some good things would start to happen.  Mostly some *EXCITEMENT*
    and *ENTHUSIASM*.  NICE PLANES, GOOD FLYING, CAMERARDIE, and maybe
    we could even host an *EVENT*.
    
    
                                                Regards,
    
                                                Jim