I think that the big picture here may be the same as it was when I was a kid and raced slot cars. More and more the PRO's and the well heeled began showing up at races and pretty soon the average kid with a few bucks to spend four himself unable to compete with the High Zoot $50.00 rewound motors and trick chassis that the factory guys were able to run. More and more the same few people were always at the winners circle and the rest of us couldn't afford to keep up.

This phenomena isn't only true with slot cars. I've seen the same with electric cars also. New and better technology is introduced and pretty soon, what was a field of players on the same level is stratified into many small factions. It seems by this thread that IMAC may be going the same way.

Sure, lithium batteries are great, but at $300+ to outfit just one airplane, who can continually do that for the sake of ounces saved. Then there are all the power boxes and assorted switches that cost a small fortune for what they actually do. I was thinking the other day that for over 20 yrs I flew with one battery, receiver, four servo's and never thought to back up anything, and in those 20 yrs I never lost a airplane to anything but my own dumb thumbs or lack of preparation.

I would sure love to see IMAC continue to be successful but I think it's far from what the original intent of the hobby may have been. I always thought it was to get guys together to compete on a less intent level than Pattern. Scale airplanes were to be the norm and no need for the exacting precision of a pattern airplane.

Seems to me that IMAC should now be called what it has become, Giant, Sort of Scale Pattern Competition. Nothing wrong with the level of precision increase but with smaller airplanes it wouldn't cost thousand of dollars to achieve. OH! Can we at least make the airplanes Scale again? To many slab sided carbon copies out there.

History is always repeating itself in one form or another it seems.

Just my opinion