ORIGINAL: MMcConville
How do you make a msitake in a freestyle routine woops? Short of crashing or crossing the dead line.
On the video, I think it is absolutely awesome. The only thing about it that is a little off IMHO is that it gives the impression from all of the flying footage used that the Shootout was a Freestyle contest, when in reality its not. Its a real, presision contest. The freestyle is a sepersate event held on the last few days and most of the folks doing the free just do it for fun and dont put in much effort to prepare. All of the prep work is to get ready for the presision part of the contest.
\Thats why CPLR's routing was the same old, as were a lot of them. Mine too. In fact even doing the freestyle for me was a last minute thing there, and this year I opted not to even bother with it.
I completely understand showing that on the vid though, the Free is a lot more entertaining to watch, but from a competitior point of view its not taken very seriously by most pilots and its not what the Shootout is about.
I was surprised at first when on the video some competitors were not really looking forward to the Freestyle part of the competition. That they had real fears about putting their planes in...flying low and aggressively was something that had to be done for the competition -- not something they looked forward to. For some reason I had this naive idea that once you got to that level it was not a concern.
Also, if they did not spend much time preparing for the Freestyle there would be even more apprehension.
I would imagine that the judging for the Freestylee a bit more subjective as well.
There is a lot that goes into these planes and if you put one in I don't imagine that is good for the score either & these guys like to win.