'The masses have always followed those at thetop of the heap. One key thing missing in today's Pattern landscape is the top pilots with guts enough to win with simple, inexpensive equipment.....And international and domestic judge panels that weren't so "blinged out" to allow such wins.....I will always admire Hanno for at least trying '

Hi Matt,
The current WC did exactly that.
Wings covered in brown paper,home made headers,silencers etc.
Success will bring sponsorship of course.
I don't buy the ; 'rule change = development = more cost ' argument at all.
The current trend in deep fuz,, designs has only just caught up with what Hatta was doing 15+ years ago.
There are no rule changes driving the development of the radios - and just look at the development there.
They have even gotten bigger and heavier .
It's just human nature to 'improve'.
It's just too easy to pin this 'tale' on the rules donkey.
All this development will happen anyway !! - maybe with subtle directional differences.

Brian