As I said in post #35, Mickey opened the door, (or uncorked the genie's bottle) when he allowed some mods to be made. It seemed innocent enough at the time, but without specific, enforeable rules, some people took that as a license to make whatever mods they wanted, and for a lot of different reasons. Freedom to make modifications is part of the fun for many of our members; folks like to "play" with the models to personalize them, and possibly improve flight characteristics. Regarding legal models, Mickey still retains control of approving additions to the legal models list as we have been discussing.

I think the explanation I gave earlier about why 1-1-76 was chosen is the one that best explains why that particular year was chosen, (remember the year cut-off was originally 1-1-70 when SPA started). At some point the legal year was extended. I need to ask Mickey how that happened, and exactly why. My guess would be that limiting the cut off to 1970 excluded too many good planes from the era when pipes and retracts were still considered optional, (retracts started about 1970 to 1971). The line had to be drawn somewhere. Choosing 1975 allowed a lot more good models to choose from. Almost anything past 1975 includes models that were definitely designed for tuned pipes and retracts, plus, (more importantly), modelers everywhere were commonly using both at contests, and not just at the highest levels, NATS and other major contests was a major factor.

I don't know the exact reason why people feel the year needs to be extended further, and if it could be extended, what year it should be extended to and why? My guess is that they like a particular plane that was designed in the year they want the limit extended to.

Just my opinion...Duane