ORIGINAL: shannah

I don't have the pattern pedigree of Tony or Troy, so take my comments for whatever they are worth to you. I rejoined pattern this year after a hiatus of about 6 years in IMAC. I flew Masters and FAI before I left. I could never, for the life of me, understand why Masters did not use the FAI sequence. It never made any sense to me then, and makes no sense to me now. The difficulties of the sequences are very comparable. By sticking with the FAI sequences as much as possible you will grow better FAI pilots. I would favor a total revamping of AMA classes to reduce the number of classes and make FAI the destination class.

I have always flown in competition with myself. I fly to see how well I can do. I know that if I fly as well as I possibly can and as consistently as I can then that's what matters. Funny enough, that ends up being good enough to win once in a while. So, flying against guys like Troy or Tony doesn't bother me in the least. I would be happy to do it more often because that is the real measure of your skill. How close can you get? And, in the event you clip them in a round then that would be a real victory. Sure, its great to win in masters, but after a while what do those victories mean? How are you doing in comparison to the rest of the world? How do you compare yourself to fliers in other countries who may be at a similar skill level? You would never know.

As for the shorter sequences, I think we should consider shortening the ama class schedules. In fact, the one thing that really allows IMAC to do so well is the short 10 maneuver sequence. You fly it twice in a contest flight. You practice the maneuvers twice as often as in pattern per each practice flight. You get better a hell of a lot faster that way. Just look at IMAC flyer progression times.

Lastly, I like the shortened FAI schedule. In fact, that's another big reason I decided to fly FAI. Maybe this is an unintended benefit, maybe its by design but it really helps equalize things on the electric power front. I can actually run a smaller pack if I choose, I tax my packs a lot less (saving $$ in the long run), and if I choose to fly a few extra maneuvers per flight then I have the juice to do it. It ends up having some really nice benefits.