<span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">I flew my first 2 contests last year in D7. With regard to participation, time and $ are scarce and getting scarcer all over. There's nothing to stop the increasing demands of life in the current economy from interfering with participation overall. My fear is that in changing the rules (weight, safety, custom-tailoring of sequences, etc.) you end up pushing potential participants away because you're creating a moving target - people don't know what they're getting into.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">I bow to many of you and your long experience in the hobby and the RC aerobatics scene. But from my point of view, if it it were 2 years ago now and I was looking at flying contests next year, it would be a turn-off to see all this banter about changing the rules. I'd probably sit it out until all this chatter dies down and I can see what, if anything, the pattern community settles upon and then decide if it interests me.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">Also, here's a point: no, the Sportsman sequence isn't easy. And it's not supposed to be easy for a newbie. If it were easy, we wouldn't have anything to strive for.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">Just like music, skiing or anything else I've had a degree of success at, pattern is hard. That is one reason why I like it - because in doing something hard I distinguish myself from those who can only do easy stuff.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">Let's keep the rules hard. Otherwise it's like grade inflation - it sucks the heart out of the endeavor.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><br style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; " /><span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; ">Bill</span>