It sounds like none of you ever flew an event at the Nats. Yes, the Nats was a wonderful concept in the old days where all the events (save indoor) were flown on a Naval base. You could fly your event and watch the others. Having it jump around the country was great too, because once you've packed to get on an airplane, it doesn't matter where it goes. It was great to see different parts of the country each year. But it was very expensive for the AMA, and it took a lot of time to organize the number of workers to run each year.

Now the Nats is nothing more than a sequential series of week long local contests that lasts the entire summer.