RC Jets
It's great. But considering the normal dropout rate among new people trying any sort of competition for the first time, it's a losing proposition mathematically.
After all, when you want to grow a lawn, you prepare the soil and spread seed over a wide area; you don't try to plant and care for each blade of grass individually. That goes double if you live in a desert. Without sufficient natural rainfall, you could easily spend your life raising one tiny patch of greenery, only to have it wither and die as soon as you turn your back.
How many times has a local racing program failed within a few months after the local "sparkplug" moved away?
2) Money, PR and the Holy Grail. Corporate sponsorship and television coverage would bail us out, if only we could get enough media attention (look at NASCAR).
This idea is also as old as racing itself. The fly in the ointment is that to generate spectator appeal, the spectators must be able to relate to the activity and understand what's going on. People who watch NASCAR® own their own cars, and they know what it's like to drive. People who watch stick-and-ball sports have played, or can imagine themselves playing, the same games. Marathons and bike races attract thousands of entrants and millions of spectators who can count on two feet, and most people have ridden a bike.
But participation and interest drop off as the events become more arcane. How many use a skeleton skiff as you know?
So, for audiences and sponsors, as well as participants, we are basically stuck with our own little community. Blues in RC Remote Control, Power Master fuels, and the hobby shops and other suppliers that sponsor our activity at a local level. They have been our lifeblood for years, and they seem destined to remain so.
3) Staying the course back into our bubble. These new (engine/airframe/propeller/wheel) configurations are exploiting a loophole we didn't see before. Let's amend the rules to restore the original intent, then ask the people who quit when the cheater hardware took over to see that it's safe to come back.
The problem with this approach is that in order to restore the "original intent," you have to step over the dead bodies of everybody who likes the new intent better. This is always a tiny minority of the original group, but a majority of the few who are left.
4) Securing a new class. "Let's add a special new class just for the first-time racers. It'll be just like the old class, but we'll ban the cheater hardware so it can't get out of hand like the old class did. And of course the rules will be very simple."
Having watched this process again and again for 30 years now, I just have to smile. Liz Taylor is getting married again? How nice. It's time to think outside the box.
The challenge faced by those of us who want to see racing prosper is finding common ground somewhere short of people who have never raced—indeed, who may never have seen a race—will be content to get a model that qualifies under the rules, begin flying it every weekend for sport, and get the competitive itch so bad that they have to organize a race for themselves and their flying buddies.
Since I wrote the preceding paragraph in the February 2002 column, I have been privileged to hold in my hands the January 1965 issue of Radio Control Modeler magazine, in which a fellow named Jerry Nekon proposes "Goodyear Pylon Races for R/C." That, my friends, is what became Formula 1. I quote now from Jerry's article:
"As the majority of active modelers know, Pylon Racing in its present form is of but recent origin, the earliest pylon race rules being based on model power of real hot-rods type fuel (the nitro) and speed. In our day only one thing, and that is flying to the Pylon contests that are periodically held. The average pylon entry hasn't got much of a chance against the hot-rods and it takes more pilots to field five Pylon events.
"As a solution to this lack of interest in a highly interesting event, I have proposed a new set of rules that I think will generate much more interest in Pylon Racing. Please bear in mind that these are not official rules and many changes may have to be made in them."
Jerry goes on to describe what, in 1965, was a typical small-sport model. To allow the model to be built safely without breaking wings in the turns, he includes a wingspan limit of 54 inches. There are also requirements for a "workable throttle" by which the model "must be able to demonstrate that it can taxi at a slow rate of speed" and a requirement for "two wheel gear with steerable tail wheel."
By 1973, when I started flying, all of these requirements had been deleted. Whether they had been omitted from the official rule proposal that was submitted to AMA, or were "simplified" out of the rules later by the Contest Board, I cannot say. I do know that in that time, Formula became complexly another digression. Jerry Nekon envisioned a solution, but the very same set of problems he set out to solve remained. Spunky 17-year-olds like me had to start somewhere else.
There are lots of ways, and if we don't learn them, we will have proven ourselves no better at sustaining popular racing activities than Liz Taylor is at sustaining marriages. The lessons are:
- Reasonable aircraft/size, wing area, etc. Otherwise there is no pool of amateur, "type certified" pilots to draw from, and the activity immediately begins to starve itself.
- The rules aren't just for the competitors. Mufflers, throttles, and all wheels may slow the racers, but they make the race itself possible and practice more valuable for those who need it.
- Don't chase anything advanced. "Simplicity" is just another word for "loop-holes."
This column is running long. I stated at the beginning that it was not for the hard-cores. All you casual readers who have made this far, see if you can get your hands on a Great Planes Slingshot 2.0 Almost Ready to Fly (ARF) with a front intake, or worse—to notice such as the OS .40 LA—Pylon racing needs cheap "novice" airplanes on the field to draw numbers.
A set of practical rules is being drafted for one class that, I hope, other similar ARFs will qualify—if you get the competitive itch and you have to organize a race for yourself and your flying buddies. Meanwhile, just have fun with it; it's fabulous!
The accompanying three-view is of a prototype LittleJet I'm putting together, built around the Sport-Jet S20L, just because I like the cone-shaped nose. E-mail me, and I'll send you the CAD computer-aided-design drawings.
Perhaps Great Planes can eventually be persuaded to add more designs to its line. We'll see.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
