ORIGINAL: Strat2003
It seems to me that distance is very hard to judge, as evidenced by nearly everyone's surprise at how far out we're actually flying. Different backgrounds, surface features and airplane sizes and shapes make it even more difficult.
I'm a little uneasy with putting any more emphasis on this aspect of judging. I think it's a whole order of magnitude harder than angles, intersections and radii.
I totally agree.
In the world of full scale IAC acro competition they have boundary judges with walkie talkies. The box consists of a cubic kilometre and the judges are placed at the back two corners. Man it gets hot out there!! Anyway there is a call by the boundary judge if the airplane is observed "out" either to the side or back of the box and the chief judge marks it down on the judging line. A penalty is applied (can't remember what it is) for each maneuver out. It is a set amount of points and not graduated like we have.
In reality this is the only way to definitavely apply a distance downgrade. The way it is written now for us is too subjective. One judges 150m might actually be 200m, etc. Do we really want to put a guy in a cage with a hard hat and have him call an "out"? Our discipline is already very labour intensive.
I have been called and downgraded for flying too far out when is was obvious and I agreed with the call in every instance. I think that this is the way it should remain at the local contest level and this subject not become another for the "snap/spin nazi's".
Cheers
MJ