MKirsh,
I was involved with the creation of the SSC Class and the rules known as the Five Commandments. Also, like Mike, I am a member of the AMA Combat Contest Committee. There were three proposals for SSC to become a "Rule Book" event for the year beginning 2005. You can see the rules proposals at www.georgiacombat.com. The deadline for submitting rules proposals to the AMA was September 30th, 2002, fully four months before we flew the first SSC contest by the provisional rules. It was too early to put it into the rule book by the rules of the time that had not yet been tested and evaluated.

The good news is that the rules are working very well. Technology has a way or progressing further than anyone expected and it will be the same in SSC. If we are going to keep it slow and survivable we will need a couple of years of flying it to make sure we are doing it right.

Within the RCCA Provsional Rules cycle we will make adjustments in July of 2003 if needed and the RCCA board will vote to continue its provisional status for 2004 or make it a full RCCA class. I expect that by the end of this contest season it will be the most popular, judged by number of entrants RC Combat class.

Here is a photo of one of my latest SSC planes. It is a warbird (not scale but semi scale) from the Lee Liddle P39 kit: