RADIO CONTROL PYLON RACING
Duane Gall, 1267 S. Beeler Ct., Denver CO 80231; E-mail: [email protected]
ALL'S QUIET on the Rules Front
By the time you read this, the 2002-2005 AMA Competition Regulations will be in the galley stage, ready for publication in January.
For the first time in three years, we will have one-stop shopping for racing rules. I won't bore you with how and why that came to be, but it will soon be much easier to find and use the rules of Radio Control (RC) Pylon. This should make the activity easier to "sell."
The rules cycle leading up to this point contained much controversy. After many months of scattered fur and feathers, the Contest Board narrowly defeated a proposal to reinstate the original but long-neglected "empty can muffler" requirement in Quickie 500 (event 428).
This would have slowed the airplanes a bit, from the current 160–165 mph range to roughly 140 mph. It would also have made the engines run cooler, simplified propeller selection, and allowed engines other than the $300 thoroughbreds to be competitive.
However, it probably would have cost the experts some money; this ultimately proved fatal to the proposal.
The experts will spend hundreds of dollars on a new gizmo that promises to increase their speed even slightly, and thousands of dollars a year on hotels and airfare to attend the handful of contests that cater to them. But tell them to spend a relative pittance on new parts that decrease their speed even slightly—even if that small expenditure promises to benefit the event overall, increase the number of contestants and contests, and make huge travel budgets an option rather than a requirement—and they howl like wet cats. 'Tis a puzzlement.
But politics is the art of the possible, and slowing down "Expert Quickie" was not possible. Instead, the entry level is still split into event 428—with tuned mufflers—and event 424 ("Sport Quickie")—with nontuned mufflers.
Until the new rule book comes out, surf to www.modelaircraft.org/Comp/1999Pylon gurgent.htm for the complete rules for both events.
There were other changes on the agenda, but nothing major. Those of you who fly with "rubber duck" antennas will need to remove them between heats, to reduce the transmitting range and prevent shoot-downs if the transmitter is accidentally turned on in the pit area.
Certain provisions from the National Miniature Pylon Racing Association (NMPRA) Pylon Racing Procedure Guide have been added to the official AMA rule book, so they are no longer mere folklore but part of every sanctioned contest.
How the Other Half Lives
Try as we may to promote official AMA racing, there are always local groups who think they have a better idea.
With the AMA rules once again unified in a single rule book, it will be easier to explain to new participants and new clubs what "our" brand of racing is all about. But there's more to it than that.
Most homebrew events start out as entry-level or casual events—an effort to get away from what the promoters perceive as the "too fast, too expensive, too specialized" character of the racing they have seen (or perhaps have never seen, but have heard about) at AMA rule book contests.
Event 424 would be a natural for this purpose, but it is not nationally uniform. Instead, the published AMA rules act like a sort of umbrella. Under the umbrella are airframe specifications, which are identical to those of 428 and do not change, and local-option provisions for engines.
Using one or more of these options, contest directors are allowed to adopt local or regional lists of approved engine brands, price limits, acceptable engine modifications, claiming rules, etc.
The result is a hodgepodge of rules that varies from district to district. Those who are interested in trying racing are forced to ask around at the local hobby shops and flying fields what engine they need to buy and what can or should be done to it to "hop it up," break it in, or keep it together long enough so they won't embarrass themselves the first time out.
This lack of uniformity encourages clubs to pitch the AMA rule book altogether and invent "casual" events from scratch.
I did an informal survey a few months ago and learned that close to 32 different hardware formulas are flown in various localities around the US. They include:
- Giant Scale AT-6s and Unlimiteds
- Stand-off Scale warbirds with four-stroke 120s on high nitro
- Almost Ready-to-Fly (ARF) T-34s with .25s
- Ace .40s with SuperTigre .40s and Performance Specialties tuned mufflers
- Quickie 500s with SuperTigre .40s and empty can mufflers
- Quickie 500s with Rossi .40s
- Quickie 500s with O.S. Max .40 FPs
- Quickie 500s with .25s
- Speed 400 Electrics
- Zagi (one-design foamie) Electrics
- Seven-cell high-tech Electrics
- Several flavors of 1/2A (event 423)
- Club 20
Of course, one could argue that such local variations would happen whether or not AMA had a national formula that produced airspeeds in the 120–140 mph range.
I can't say it couldn't happen, but I do recall that when event 428 was in that speed range—that is, before the advent of tuned mufflers—there wasn't such a proliferation of nonstandard events.
Quickie 500 was the local, low-budget casual event for clubs to put on if they didn't have enough experts around to justify Formula I or its smaller cousin, Quarter Midget (QM) with .15s.
Incidentally, the best Formula Is averaged 160–165 mph and the QMs topped out at approximately 110 mph.
So how's it going?
Local homebrew events tend to blossom for a couple of seasons, then peter out when the novelty wears off and it becomes clear that one or two local hotshots have managed to corner the market on the event.
There is definitely safety in numbers. AMA's system, for all its faults, is the only one so far that has managed to attract a national following and keep it.
But let's say you want to get a group together and concoct a casual racing event for next season. What are the pitfalls to avoid?
With nearly 30 years of observation, I have identified the six factors that inevitably kill off local racing in short order.
- "Simple rules." This means rules with loopholes you could drive a truck through, and somebody always does. Then you're left trying to plug the loopholes after the fact.
The guy with the hot setup makes a huge stink about any proposed rules changes that would threaten his investment, and everybody else either buys an identical hot setup (which means flushing their own investment down the tubes) or quits.
- Expense. See "Simple Rules." The allowable technology must be decided on ahead of time and spelled out in the rules. Otherwise, the sky's the limit on budgets, and the contestant with his or her own engine factory wins.
- Airspeed. See "Expense." Cost increases by the square of the airspeed. A wing that could be built for $20 to withstand the stresses at 90 mph will cost $80 if it's built to withstand 180 mph.
And the ability of new people to fly the course diminishes by the cube of the airspeed. If eight of your local club members start racing at 90 mph, only one will have the natural talent and dedication to stay with it at 180 mph.
- Noise. To race—and more importantly, to practice—at your local field, you must specify muffled engines. However, the muffler itself is a source of mischief. You will find a good definition of an "expansion chamber muffler" in the new AMA rules. Use it!
- Fiddle factor. Event 424 isn't costly or all that fast, but who knows what engine to buy or what tricks can or should be done to it? That depends on who you ask, where you live, and whether the manufacturer has changed anything since the last production run. For that reason, 424 loses a point in this category. Otherwise, it has the makings of a popular local event.
- Specialization. Airplanes with engines that cannot idle, taxi and steer, or take off from grass are not as appealing to new people as airplanes that can do these things—regardless of the fact that they aren't required to do these things as part of the official competition.
In Quarter 40 and 428 Quickie, we have an entire generation of airplanes that have to be started on the runway by a two-man team, and can't "go around" if the pilot blows the landing approach. Through Darwinian selection, these airplanes have lost the ability to idle. They are perceived as weird—not flown very much in Sunday-afternoon flying sessions, not seen very often, and therefore hated and feared by sport fliers.
So when you stand up at a club meeting to ask for support to put on a contest, don't be surprised if the vote goes in favor of a jet rally or International Miniature Aerobatic Club (IMAC) event, where people can just bring out what they already have and fly them as they normally do.
If everybody had a race-legal airplane that doubled as a user-friendly sport airplane, you'd see the vote go toward racing more often.
When the May issue went to press, Brian's record was still wending its way through the official channels. MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
