Continuing my thoughts on where naming individual sensors as legal / illegal could lead . . .
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I could also make the argument that monitoring receiver battery voltage gives a flier an unfair competitive advantage.
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Say if someone in my class forgets to charge their receiver battery prior to round #2. Half way thru the flight, the competitor receives a low receiver battery warning through telemetry and lands their plane. The competitor then continues to fly in rounds #3 through #6 and beats me with that same airplane.
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At the conclusion of round #6, I file a protest with the CD demanding that all of his scores from the middle of round #2 through the end of round #6 be zeroed because without the telemetry advantage he would have lost his plane and not been able to complete the contest rounds #3-#6.
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I could also say the same thing about monitoring cylinder head temperature to detect a lean engine mixture condition. We don't know where his engine would have seized, so I demand his flights be zeroed.
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Or perhaps demand that he go to his backup airplane . .
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I'm not saying that I want guys to lose their airplanes, but how many times have you won or lost a contest because of equipment failures? Do the other competitors give you a mulligan? No, they say "That's part of the game", see ya next year. So does using telemetry to avoid equipment failures give a flier a "competitive advantage"? Fuzzy area . . .
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The point I'm trying to make is that pattern is all about fitting as much "competitive advantage" as you can into a 2m x 2m x 5kg box. Why are contra drives considered legal when telemetry feedback to the pilot is illegal? Because contra drives are mechanical and telemetry is electronic? A person could argue that a contra drive uses mechanical processing inside the gearbox to cancel out P-Factor and Spiraling Slipstream effects, thus giving the flier a distinct competitive advantage. Then I would continue the argument (with myself) that the gearbox doesn't receive any inputs from outside sensors, so its OK.
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Overall, I think the rules change is definitely a step in the right direction. I'm just trying to throw out a few ideas to where I think the rules could be simplified.
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