Guys, I'm gonna wade in here with my opinions, after giving it a lot of thought during the last year or so. My son and I were regular competitors for several years, and consistently drove over 10 hours each way to race 3 or 4 times a year until the internal politics took all the fun out of it for us. Primarily, as Tony said, the nay-sayers started tinkering with the rules (breakouts, mufflers, etc) until it became problematic whether we could race or not after driving those distances. We never could figure the rationale for the erratic rules game the CD's were playing under the guise of noise control (beating up the 4 strokes when the nitro piped 2 strokes and stock Nelsons were far, FAR, noiser) and hitting the "blatent" breakouts with punitive zeros (I really think it became a personality thing with the SWRA board). For what it's worth, my son and I almost always placed very high in the classes we ran in, but we also did our homework, came prepared, and were serious about the racing. We were willing to spend the time and money to compete, knowing we were always challenged, and a win agianst the "big guys" REALLY meant something to us. After the CD's "dumbed" it down to the lowest common denominator (for those who either didn't want to do their homework, or work at building a competitive racer), the challenge went away, and so did the competition. That's when we said the cost no longer justified the time and effort we had to make to race so far away, and stopped racing. I mean, good grief, who wants to get a trophy just for showing up with no challenge??? At that point, we dropped out, and started pursuing other avenues that would give us the challenge we wanted.

You want to fix what's wrong with SWRA??? Bring back the challenge: 1. do away with the stupid, meaningless muffler rule - picking a DB limit that's realistic for racing is meaningless- look at real racing (Indy 500, drag racing, full scale RENO, etc) - how many of them have mandatory noise limits - GET REAL!! RACING IS NOISY!!!!!!!! It comes with the territory!!!!! DEAL WITH IT!!!! 2. Get away from the blatent breakout punitive nonsense - let the guys go as fast as they want - just give them a zero for the breakouts - no problem - no hassle, no score - no win!!,; 3. encourage and promote better scale building (ie: punish the roaches with low scores and realistically reward the outstanding scale birds by doing realistic judge training); 4. tweak the wing area/displacement rules to give the 2 cyc a better chance agianst the big 4 strokes; and lastly, put the competition (challenge) back into the racing instead of punishing the hard chargers!! Put the emphasis back on the Gold class by encouraging innovation instead of punishing the serious competitors with stupid rules that are meaningless anyway.

For those of you who ***** about the static judging, remember the base purpose of SWRA - to duplicate RENO style pylon racing. If all you want to do is to grab a cheap airplane, stick a big engine on it and go race, then go with the quikees or "run what you brung" type racing. That's NOT the intent of SWRA. IMHO, the static judging kept the scale interest in the event (and the participants), and appealed to the spectators. Doing away with the static judging always ends up with a bunch of "what the H*** is that thing?" type racers. Who wants to compete with, and watch that??? You're afraid to lose a scale bird with a mid-air??? Well, think of the $ the Indy cars have invested to do what they do - do you think they like losing a multi-million $ car in a crash? If you can't stand losing a scale bird, maybe scale racing really isn't for you, so don't do it; but at least, don't dumb it down for those of us who are willing to make the sacrifice!!

I'd STILL like to race, but want to have head to head competitive battles with my peers, without stupid, meaningless rules that do nothing but satisfy power trips of the CD's being shoved down my throat at each race. I think if the wing area/displacement rules were tweaked realistically, the noise rules (ineffective anyway) were dropped, the blatent breakout rule was discarded, the static judges were better trained at each event, and the event were allowed to progress upward, instead of "dumbing it down" to the lowest common denominator, it might, just MIGHT flourish again. Once the challenge and excitement is brought back, the racers might come back, too. Think about how it was before the CD's and rulemakers started tinkering with it...

FWIW, these are my thoughts, and that's why I believe the serious competitors dropped out. Bring back the challenge, do away with the silly, stupid, meaningless rules, and you just might resurrect the SWRA Mini-Reno racing scene once again.

Regards, Les Morrow