Gary,

The correct quote is: "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."

The "hard" we should be talking about is flying precision aerobatics, not making weight. The non-flying rules should be designed to keep the playing field reasonably even.

You need to reread Dale's e-mail. He used light components throughout for a new airplane he is going to campaign in Masters ending up about five ounces overweight. It's tough to make up five ounces through lighter linkage than that provided and a bit less epoxy on the motor mount. Sounds to me like he got a Visa that had a little extra something in the layup.

Why can't we just move on with some relaxed weight rules? There is no advantage to being heavy but there is a big disadvantage to locking flyers out because they don't want to or cannot afforf to spend the money to make weight. With no BOM rule, why are we requiring the massive expertise required to make any given F3A airframe make weight for AMAclasses? You should be able to assume that if you add the right stuff to a new airframe, you will make weight. It just isn't so.

John