Paul,
Does this mean that any 2m pattern plane may now compete in the different classes of IMAC? This would appear as a very slippery slope. I could easily see two years from now that every plane flown in IMAC is based off a pattern ship. Sounds like the line once drawn in the sand for acceptable models has now been erased.
ORIGINAL: PaulBK
there are three things to consider:
1. whether the two by two has an advantage over other airplanes, which it doesn't.
2. what purpose is served by turning away a would be competitor.
3. there are lots and lots of airplanes that compete in imac that do not meet the scale requirements of the rules. sorry, but it's true. when i was on the rules committee i spent a lot of time researching this issue, and the findings were illuminating. which is why, btw, the 10% limit was eliminated in the prior rules cycle. the current one is pretty meaningless, and if it was imposed, an awful lot of airplanes would be disqualified. so i wouldn't make a big deal about it.
we went through this with jim oddino, the writer for rcm who flew a 2 meter giles. the result was he wrote some very nice things about us in the magazine - seemed like a pretty good trade-off.
Paul