OK guys, here's an excersize for you. I have uploaded some vieos that someone on another forum made on a sim for each 2008 sequence. Take a look at the basic sequence and see if you can tell where the deductions are. Some are very subtle but are there. One thing to take into account is in a video things are always not what they appear. Here is the basic video. Feel free to PM me or respond in here with where you see the deductions and what they are. Make sure you post the time as shown on the media player. This should get a good debate going.

http://www.hiddenhangarrc.com/video/imac/Basic2008.wmv

and all the rest of the sequences are at:

http://www.hiddenhangarrc.com/video/imac/

Now the thing is you may not have had a chance to look over the Aersti stuff or the judging guide so I have uploaded the current ones here. Make sure you get all of them. Read Aresti made easy and the 2008 Judging guide. The guide will tell you where the deductions are and the Aersti made Simple will help you learn how to read Aresti

I recommend you print them all off and make an indexed 3-ring notebook and take it with you. Some of it is dry reading but to be the best you can you do need to know this stuff.

IMC files:

http://www.hiddenhangarrc.com/pdf/imac/

Oh yea, remember one thing about IMAC, it's all about having fun and should you place in the top three, even better . We do not get money for this, we sometimes get a plaque and sometimes you get a shirt. I can tell you this, you will make some really cool friends that are a wealth of information. It's not uncommon to have other pilots toss hardware your way when you have a problem just because they want to see you compete and have fun and in most cases they want nothing in return. I discovered this firsthand at my second contest. Coolest thing I ever had happen to me in R/C.

And something else I ran across that means a lot

To quote Pete Goldsmith.
"Learn to fly with your wings Level"

If you know what level wings looks like, geometry of figures becomes much easier.
Take your stick plane, hold it level but have the wings banked 2 or 3 degrees. Pull exactly 90 degrees up and see what the start of that next line looks like. Its messed up. Now not only are you trying to draw a straight line but now you are having to correct for the wings not being square.. Makes for a lot of extra work.

Most of us fly with the wing thats pointing at them slightly low. L wing down flying right to left. R wing down flying left to right.

Have a local IMAC pilot look you over, ask him to be highly critical and listen to him. You may feel bad but if you listen you will learn

To practice break up the sequences into 2 or 3 manuevers, practice them until you can reliably do them and the another set the same when, then put them all together.

Something I like to do is spend 5 minutes doing nothing but the first two maneuvers, then 2 or 3 minutes doing whatever I felt like to take a break, then another 5 minutes doing the same 2 maneuvers. I would continue this until I did all 10 of them, the I would start doing the whole sequence the same way, I do one sequence, do it again and then spend a minute or two doing what I wanted then if fuel allowed did the sequence a third time. One thing I just thought of that you should know is in IMAC, you will do the sequqence twice each time you fly, except for unknowns, those you only do once. Basic has no unknowns, but it's not uncomon for the basic pilots to do their sequence just one time on one flight to help them get used to doing an unknon, it is typically scored as a single sequence and counts towards the total points

And one final thing, attend a judging seminar in your region. Head over to the http://www.mini-iac.com site and look around, it's kinda early yet for the scholls/seminars to be posted but keep coming back to the site and checking.

Just so you all know, I competed in full scale aerobatics for a short time as well as way back in the early days of IMAC along with flying for Rosie O'Gradys in Orlando Fl doing some skywriting. I was out of it for some time do to a heart condition and came back and started back in basic, that was this year. I'm going to sportsman next year and maybe intermediate sometime next year as well but only if I can nail rollers, I just cannot get the timing right, I can do it but it looks like crap. I have a wealth of info to share but I need to work on things as well. Your best source is the guys that have been doing it awhile.

All I can do is give you what I learned some time ago and this past season. To give you an idea of what can happen when you research and listen and do what is suggested, I had people in the NE and SE regions grumbling that it was time I moved up so now they get to deal with me in Sportsman and that was after only 5 contests