No worries Ollie, you and I have been friends for a while now and I enjoy the back and forth. You do bring up some great points as usual. IMO it would be a huge mistake to change what the SAMs club has worked so long to accomplish. Being involved in the actual racing and having lengthy conversations with JR on multiple occasions has brought me the knowledge that what you guys have came at the expense of many man hours. Also I am really not the guy to try to re-invent anything. the easiest way to be successful is do what the guy who is successful is doing. With that in mind, what I meant by standardizing is I would hope that other organizations would evolve to something that closer resembled SAMs format. From what I can see I think RCPRO comes close. The Triangle series is pretty far from it especially now that Unlimited has been dropped. I don't know the reasoning behind this but feel that was a mistake. Last race we had close to the same participants in unlimited as we did modified .46. The end of unlimited in the Triangle series IMO just widened the gap. Now as far as just running two classed on a Nats level, I just really can't agree with that format either. Getting back to taking a look at what has worked I will use the Tucson Aerobatic Challenge as an example. They have the normal IMAC classes ( Sans basic class ) and then the top dog invitational class. I think the Nats warbird event should be close to the same. Have all 3 break out classes bronze, silver and gold but then add an unlimited non breakout class. We NEED to offer a notional event that attracts not only the top level guys but the guys who love to race but are just starting out or don't have the desire to run around at 180 mph. The current racing formats support this. Not everyone wants to fly Q40 for various reasons but do race Q500 simply because of less complexity. The Q500 airplanes are almost as fast and are not that less expensive but much easier to build and operate. Their take off and landing manners are easier as well. Pattern and IMAC both have their lower levels as well and are the foundation of those sports. Bottom line is that whatever we do, we NEED to support the lower classes as well. Obviously this is not going to be an easy road to travel but I for one feel that the end result would be worth while.