Twitter

Our long suffering Contest Director, Dave Pound, has put finger to keyboard to explain the new scale rules. The outcome is:

New rules for our scale days.

By popular request, we are making some modifications to the way that we judge the scale aircraft at our 2 annual scale events.

The changes are to try and give a more even points possibility between the ARF and the scratch/kit build aircraft that turn up on our scale days, and to recognise the amount of effort that has been put into the model, whether it be scratch built, a highly modified ARF, or a pure ARF that has been “tricked-out” with extra detail.

At the last scale day we had 30 plus ARF aircraft and 13 scratch/kit built aircraft.

Without the ARF aircraft entering, we would be struggling to have a scale day.

 The points score will now be out of a total possible maximum score of 100 points for each enetered aircraft. The breakdown, now, will be:

1)      A maximum of 15 points for take-off and another 15 points for landing.

The take-off and landing will still be a designated flight that means you only get one attempt at this and you have to tell the judges that "This is my designated flight for the scoring of the take-off and landing". As usual, this adds an element of risk, and also rewards the pilots that can deliver a consistent and scale-like take-off and landing. The judges will, though, take account of issues such as fixed tail-skids – they’ll know that a WW1 biplane handles less cleanly on the ground than a 2010 Cessna!

2)      The flight component score will be out of a maximum of 30 points and included in the flight score will be up to 3 possible manoeuvres that you have elected and nominated in advance. These will be on the judges score sheets for them to judge you on, you can pick any manoeuvres that the full size aircraft was capable of performing eg you could pick, roll, inverted and spin and the judges will be looking out for these manoeuvres during your flight or flights.

 As in the past you can have as many flights as you wish to try and improve your flight score up to the maximum of 30 points.

3)      There will be a new component in the contest that will be out of a maximum of 40 points for “scale detail”. That means that if you strip an ARF and put a lot of work and time into the scale detail, then that will be taken into consideration. The judging of this part will be by a selected panel of judges who know what they are looking for. They’ll be judging your effort and the scale impact of the plane. They won’t be counting rivets but they will be rewarding finish and “rightness”. They’ll probably do all this judging during the lunch break, so pilots will have had an opportunity to catch their eye with the flight appearance before they allocate their scores. The three judges will each come up with a score, out of 40, and the average will be used, Naturally,  no individual will judge their own entry!

As I have said earlier, we’ve tried to even-up the scoring so that all aircraft get fairly judged, and the judges will be able to  recognise both the building and the flying elements of the aircraft.

 There are four categories on our scale days:

·         Under 7kg civilian

·         Over 7kg civilian

·         Under 7kg military

·         Over 7kg military

In the past you would only get 5 entry points for entering the scale day as a whole but now you can increase the entry points by entering more then one category, as you can now earn 5 points for entering each of the four categories (so if you enter all four categories and fly in each then you will get the maximum of 20 points towards the annual club competition, increased, of course, if your aircraft gets one of the top positions in a category).

BUT, you only get the five entry points if the aircraft flies (no points for hangar queens) so as long as the wheels get off the ground on takeoff, you will be awarded your five entry points for any category you enter.

The idea behind this change is to encourage more aircraft, and more people entering more categories.

To summarize:- 

   "Take off max. 15 points."

   "Landing  max. 15 points."

   "Flight   max. 30 points, including assessment of 3 nominated 3 manoeuvres.”

   "Scale detail  max. 40 points"

You will be eligible for 5 entry points for every category entered (but you don’t get 10 points for entering 2 aircraft in one category, nor do you get 5 points for flying someone else’s aircraft if they have already entered it).

This new system has been the subject of a lot of ideas and debate. We reckon the changes will make our scale events even more successful but, naturally, if there is room for improvement after we try them at the next event, they can be changed again.

Dave