Originally Posted by
astrohog
Great historical record of what HAS happened. That is a long and comprehensive list that tells us what we already established in this thread; that historically, the NATS had rotated venues. It has absolutely nothing to do with our current conversation, or the questions I previously asked of you.
As to your claim that local-->, regional-->, national-type progression won't work for model aviation, I would point to the Scale Masters event, which does very well with that type of format. Again, can you share some facts for why you believe it will exclude, "the vast majority" of competitors?
I noticed that you excluded the number of attendees at each event. In order to substantiate your claims, and to find viable solutions, those numbers are needed, along with current numbers of folks who wish to, or regularly compete in each of the NATS disciplines.
Astro
I will look for the info, but I seem to remember that the reason that the NATS stopped traveling (at least with regard to the Navy sponsorship) was budget cuts. The NATS is quite the event, I don't know if you've ever been to one. As it is, I've only been to one myself (Westover), and it took up essentially the entire base. And costs a lot of $$'s. So another reason for consolidating it is a reduction in costs.
In regards to the skating analogy, typical local competitions would have a total of probably 50 competitors, and there would be 5-10 such competitions in a region, with maybe 3 classes. so out of 250-500 you would get 9. Now, again I don't exactly remember (this was 45 years ago), but I think there are 3 regions to a Sectional, with 3 or 4 Sectionals. So 27 times say 4 is 108 competitors total, and each Sectional sends 9 to Nationals. So 36 competitors, who have incurred enormous expenses (outside of the normally ridiculous costs of figure skating).
Now again, when it comes to big competitions, I would have no issue with AMA buying and developing future Muncie-style venues, so that large meets such as the NATS, the Scale Masters, Top Gun, etc could have more even better attendance.
R_Strowe