foxx, I understand what you are saying. To be clear, in scale competition you do not have to have a pilot in your plane during static judging but you must have a pilot in place during flight judging. When this rule was first implemented several years ago, it really ate at me. Over the years, I have just got used to it. However, my opinion of this rule is that it is merely for the spectators, not the flyers or the judges. So that while flying our planes it gives more of a realistic appearance in the air.