both phaedrus and I have been around long enough that we have heard perhaps not all, but certainly an awful lot of reasons that basic is not inclued in the nats, and the lack of interest among basic pilots has never been one of them. on the contrary, back in the days of "doug's list" there were a number of imac basic pilots who felt shunned that they would not be welcome at the nats and felt that forcing them to fly sp wasn't in anyone's best interest. a fomer imac vp who is now long gone felt that crowning a basic pilot was tantamount to an adult winning a pine wood derby race. the nats is an imac event, to call it anything else is game of words, and by one who isn't well informed as to the history of how the IMAC Nats found itself in Muncie in the first place, and all the crap that followed as a result - most notably the sudden interest in noise and the political dancing that followed. and given that phaedrus (bill) is the chairman of the imac rules committee, (and I am a former chairman of the IMAC sequence committee) i suspect he might be in the know on this one. this is way off topic i know, but it does surface once in a while and i have always felt needs to be discussed.

shawn, my name is Paul Kopp...in live in So Cal and was more or less the point person for the early 2000 Southern California IMAC and then SCAT events. Which BTW, is where Intermediate originated, and where we also got a tremendous amount of sponsor support for among other things, for creating as one of our contest priorities the continued involvement of the Basic pilots. We know a lot of the same people, but not sure if we ever flew together.

P