ei,
What attracted me into pattern flying in middle 1970th was the rather soft and graceful manouvering of the plane in the sky.
On the other hand the screaming engines with pipes was also attracting at that time for most of us, and retractable landing gear did not hurt either.
The precise and gracefulness of (F3A) pattern flying is still attractive to me and one of the reasons I fly F3A also today (with our "guppy" like F3A 2 meter planes).
F3A has not much to offer an audience these days I'm afraid. They get bored after watching a couple if flights and I hear many complain that the planes are at
a long distance, especially at the turn around manouvers. It has to be quiet as a mouse at the contest while pilot is flying. The public usually do not have a clue
what manouvre is performed in the sky. People that fly F3A and know the schedule can of course appreciate a real good flight by another flyer.
It is hard to get volonteers to help in competitions also and usually the competitors themselves has to be scribers at local contests (at least in my country).
Maybe a Nutomatic hand held scooring device with a monitor etc will help some but they cost also and must be maintaned.
The biggest problem, at least in my country, is that young people is not attracted that much to F3A flying anymore. I do not know what can be done about that.
To learn to fly FAI F3A is a challange for most people, not to talk about the final Schedule. In our country we decided a couple of years ago that it is decided each year
if final program is to be flown at our national Championship, people just do not have time usually to practive on both P and F Schedule and the user base is rather small.
The best flyers for sure need the F Schedule to have demands for them but probably for the broad base of F3A flyers it is on the edge to be to demanding, at least if one
want to fly it reasonably good F schedule.
F3A probably need some sort of change to attract Young people again and probably something is needed to be done so spectators do not loose interest watching the flying.
I do not know how. But to continue on same track as today in the future will not help.

Gyros in pattern:
In entry classes it would probaly be OK to allow gyro just get people to participate in competitions but at some point up the ladder I'm sure no gyro should not be allowed since pure pilotskills should be used there.
The box:
In our country it is need from July 1 2018 to have a permission from ofr national avaiation authority to fly higher then 120 meter on a model flying field (that they consider safe for flying higher then 120 meter).
F3A box height is about 260 meter in front of pilot at 150 meter distance out. So for practicing F3A, or for copetitions, as if July 1 here in our country the field/club must have a written permission from our national aviatioin authority.
It is more and more complicated to just get up in the air and be able to fly any F3A Schedule here.

/Bo