RC Pylon Racing
that. One might as well give up on marriage because Liz Taylor can't make it work. The fact is, she's doing it wrong. She may be hopeless, but marriage itself isn't.
When I started out in racing in 1974, racing (Quarter Midget with .15s) was a local fun-fly event. It was just challenging enough and sexy enough to bring a sparkle to the eyes of a spunky 17-year-old with plenty of time on his hands and a love of fresh air and exercise, but it was still accessible. How many kids today could use something like that? And couldn't we oldsters use their help calling cuts on us while we show them how it's done?
At this point I would be remiss if I didn't congratulate young Gino Del Ponte, son of longtime racer and kit-maker Mike Del Ponte, on winning the JR Gold Cup Quarter 40 contest in Phoenix AZ against a field of 51 older competitors.
My detractors will cite this as evidence that racing is fine and we have plenty of new blood. I say one or two youngsters out of 52 is not enough. The fact that Gino is so notable proves my point. There should be a whole pack of young people at every contest, and they should come from everywhere—not only from among our own ranks.
If we were doing our job right, RC Pylon would be as popular with the younger set as Nintendo®—or at least snowboarding.
The Slippery Slope: I'm not the first one to notice this problem, of course. Efforts to promote racing are as common as test flights. They tend to fall into four well-worn categories.
- Individual encouragement. "If every one of us would just find a promising beginner, nurture him/her as our own personal protégé and teammate, and bring him/her to a couple of contests, we could double the number of racing pilots within a year."
I've heard this one many times—most recently from the proponents of the old Formula I event, right after they beat down all the rule proposals to allow muffled engines (imagine that!), limit the nitromethane content of the fuel, and relax the requirements for cockpit detail and mirror finishes on the airplanes.
Not that individual encouragement is bad.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
