RADIO CONTROL SCALE AEROBATICS
By
Mike Hurley 11542 Decatur Ct., Westminster CO 80234 E-mail: [email protected]
NEXT YEAR, 2005, marks AMA’s three-year rules cycle change and implementation of AMA’s new competition rules. For the majority of Scale Aerobatics competitors, that cycle, affecting the International Miniature Aerobatic Club (IMAC), is significant. A total of 16 new rules will be added to IMAC, and some of them will completely change the way we fly our airplanes in competition.
The IMAC board of directors has requested that we start flying the most radical new rules in the 2004 season to get a jump on learning them for when the new rules go into effect in 2005. To shed light on some of the new changes and how they will alter our contests, I talked with IMAC President Tom Wheeler.
About Tom Wheeler
Tom started in radio control (RC) in 1979, racing RC gas on-road cars. Because his father was a fighter pilot, Tom had always had an interest in aviation, and in 1991 he started flying RC aircraft and soon learned that he was quite good at building. Tom started building for others and has constructed more than 400 aircraft to date.
He began to gravitate toward Giant Scale, and in 1994 he joined the International Aerobatic Club (IAC)—a full-scale competition club—not to fly but to learn and to help with its events. In 1996 Tom was elected assistant vice president for his region in the International Miniature Aircraft Association (IMAA). He began flying RC Scale Aerobatics and joined IMAC in 1997. In 1999 he was named north central regional director. He served a short stint as the national IMAC vice president in 2000 and became IMAC president later that year.
Since that time, IMAC has seen significant changes and improvements. A regional points system has been created to award regional champions. Now there are written descriptions to define each classification (Basic, Sportsman, etc.). There is a new catalog of maneuvers with defined K (difficulty) factors and use criteria defining what maneuvers are acceptable for each class. The flying and judging guidelines have been completely rewritten. A long-term plan has been put in place to address a growing noise issue. The plan has turned the tide and is continuing to reduce that problem. Other significant changes continue to unfold to keep IMAC on track and in step with changes in model-aircraft equipment and the full-scale aerobatic arena so that we continue to fly scale aerobatics.
Following is our conversation.
Q&A with Tom Wheeler
MH: Tom, there are some significant, almost radical, changes in this year’s rules cycle. How did you and the board come up with these changes and why are they so sweeping?
TW: Our number-one statement at the beginning of the rule book is that we’re a miniature version of IAC. With that as our guideline, it only makes sense that we’d use their rule book. But the IAC rule book can be modified annually and ours can’t, so we had fallen behind. We had to take a big step to catch up. Since we can put in rules modifications only every three years, we’ll always be behind.
MH: Briefly, what are some of the more significant changes that will go into effect in 2005?
TW: There are 16 new rules, but some are multiples dealing with the same subject. The most impacting are:
- New Freestyle judging criteria.
- The Intermediate class becomes official.
- No landing allowed between sequences for refueling.
- A 180° 2,000 x 1,000-foot zoneless box and positioning score.
- The figures catalog detailing acceptable figures by class for Unknowns becomes official.
- Scale outline must be within 10%. Wingspan determines the scale and everything needs to be within 10% of that.
- All K factors will now match FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale). No more multiple factors for the tailslide and the rollers.
- Eliminates the whole section on figure centers, as that is no longer needed with the zoneless box.
- Eliminates the double-jeopardy penalty for sequence breaks and added figures. In the past if you made a mistake—say you came out of a Humpty Bump inverted instead of upright—you'd zero the Humpty and the next maneuver you were going into. Now you'll just zero the maneuver where you made the error.
- Eliminates the 10° cheat on tailslides. In the past, pilots were allowed to lean their airplanes up to 10° forward or backward to help it fall into the tailslide. This is no longer permitted.
MH: Explain the zoneless box and positioning scores. How did you come up with them and why are they good for IMAC?
TW: The zoneless box was first introduced in CIVA and IAC in 1999. CIVA (Commission Internationale de Voltige Aérienne) is the worldwide commission for aerobatics under the auspices of FAI. The reasons they incorporated it were to help pilots reduce the size of the box. Even full-scale unlimited pilots do not have the same power-to-weight ratios we do, and their problem is that if they fly across the box they lose a lot of energy for their next figure. They need everything they can get.
With eliminating the zones there had to be some other determination of how well figures were placed within the box, so the positioning score was the way to do it. Basically it measures how the entire sequence is centered in the aerobatic box. Figures should be placed so that judges can see how round your loop is, for example. Also, it’s difficult to judge a loop if it’s too close to you.
The zoneless box now makes the entire sequence a flowing event so it’s no longer just individual figures flown precisely but individual figures flown in a symphony of presentation. We’re looking for consistent spacing between maneuvers and figures and also consistency within the figures. It’s still a difficult thing to score, especially for someone who hasn’t witnessed flying zoneless sequences.
We’ve had a few pilots here in the North Central Region get together and fly the sequences. These guys didn’t know anything about the zoneless box, but it became quite clear to them after just a couple of flights what was expected and how these sequences look. The patterns are, in fact, much, much smaller than any sequences we’ve had before. It can be a real advantage to a pilot too; we used to have to fly from one end of the box to the other, and that was not a free pass. That was an opportunity for downgrades. And of course it increases the time it takes to fly the sequence.
With the zoneless box you’re moving from one figure to a pause with straight-and-level flight. You might do a three count before you start the next figure. You can figure out which two figures might be the farthest left and farthest right that you have to go. Then you fly everything else inside that in a balanced way, and as long as you center the whole sequence in front of the judges you’re fine. If the sequence is centered in front of you, your positioning score should be high.
And if by chance it's a really windy day and your whole sequence is getting blown downwind, a judge can determine the entire sequence was maybe 20° left of center. As a judge, if the farthest figure on the left was roughly 60° left of me and the farthest figure on the right was on an angle of roughly 40° to me, there's a 20° spread, which is really a 10° error. In other words, if you were to push the sequence over 10°, you'd be centered. So if everything else looks good, that might be a 1-point downgrade.
I don't envision the downgrades being too great. I can't see how you could zero somebody for positioning as long as the sequence was flown in the correct order and you stayed within the box. Even if everything was flown in the right-hand box and you said it was 90°, that's still only a 4.5 deduction.
I'm not saying that's exactly the way judges will judge because judges will apply some of their own criteria. And as long as the judge is consistent between pilots in a round it's really not going to make any difference. The positioning score is a very minor K factor. Primarily, I see it differentiating between the top pilots more than people farther down the board who may make errors in flying each individual figure.
For more information about position scoring, go to the IAC Web site: http://members.iac.org/knowns/knowns2004/2004_rules_proposals_final.pdf. There is a 12-page PDF document about the rules changes. On page 11 there's a good description of the positioning score. IMAC's intent is to follow this philosophy.
MH: The Freestyle scoring represents another substantial change. How will it be done?
TW: Freestyle is also going along with the scoring system CIVA and IAC implemented a couple of years ago. As with IAC and CIVA, Freestyle is an optional event, but in those organizations it's only open to Advanced and Unlimited pilots for safety reasons. Our new criteria for Freestyle is essentially a copy of theirs, but open to all pilots.
It further defines for a judge the type of elements to look for in a routine and what is expected of the aircraft, and now assigns K factors for different sections of the Freestyle score. In the past, the Freestyle rules were only a couple of paragraphs; now they're more substantial.
Freestyle scoring is broken down as follows:
- Technical merit — total 90K:
- 20K for flight envelope utilization (exploring what the aircraft can do).
- 40K for execution of those maneuvers (how well the pilot is in control).
- 30K for variety of different axes and flight paths.
- Artistic impression — total 90K:
- 50K for flow of the figures (contrasting periods of graceful and dynamic maneuvers).
- 40K for orientation and optimal position (presenting your sequence so the judge can best see what you're doing).
- Positioning — 20K for symmetry of the box.
This approach has been used the last couple of years at the TOC (Tournament of Champions) and the Masters. Noted judge Fred Johnson started using this a couple of years ago, pulling from the CIVA criteria, and it's been fairly effective.
MH: My understanding is that you'd like Contest Directors (CDs) to use the 2005 criteria in their 2004 contests utilizing an AMA waiver. How can a CD get that done?
TW: It's really quite simple. When filling out the forms for their sanctions, CDs simply state that they want to apply the "zoneless box" rules. Steve Kalu, AMA Technical Director, knows exactly which rules apply to the zoneless box, and they will be granted. There's no need to provide any more detail.
MH: Does that include the Freestyle scoring and all the other rules changes?
TW: Those would be separate. For now I'd just say use the zoneless box, and if you want to use the new Freestyle criteria, state that as well. But all the other rule changes are too detailed for a pilot or judge to know this year, even though they've been out there.
MH: Where can people go to read more detail about the 2005 rules changes?
TW: There's a summary of the rules on the AMA Web site (http://modelaircraft.org) under "Competition," then "Rules Proposals." There is also more detail on the IMAC Web site.
MH: There's talk every year about restricting the size of airplanes in Basic class.
TW: On the surface that sounds like a logical thing to do, but I think in reality it would be more restrictive than what we have right now, which is allowing anybody to fly. The whole idea behind Basic is that it's an open class and you can bring any type you want. If you restrict it, then you've specialized that class and it becomes about trying to find the best equipment that fits within those guidelines. That's not going to do any good for somebody who just wants to give IMAC a try.
MH: What are some ideas under consideration for the future in IMAC?
TW: Next year we'll probably be accepting bids from people who would want to host a national IMAC championship. We'll still have the AMA Nationals, of course, but we're considering also some kind of revolving, open-participation national event. Those who want to compete should be able to, rather than restricting it to invitation only.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
