The documentation part for you, Don, would be your strong point. The agony of you pouring over pictures and picking out what you see is important is exactly what you do in your threads and it is what the judges are looking at. Technically you can build a perfect plane to bad documentation and win, but in reality you are being judged by peers who like the same things you do and seem to go way out of the way to be fair. And as for travel, come on, a professor can afford to fly back to the US every weekend with a model for some flying. You have a special case that cant be helped. Times are hard now, but if there were a bunch with 200 miles of my house I would be going. The closest is 300 which I go to but the next is 450 and that is too far unless I am making news. The flying part is not bad. I think the flying is a little stogy the way it is done as their is no real groove, but it is fair. If you build a fighter, you should not fly it like a Cub and the reverse is the same. Flying it brings the soul out of the plane; they are not static objects but are alive. Every time I go to an air museum, I wish I could get the planes out and see them fly; they seem to be sad be cause they were benched for being too good. I know that you cant go fly the Spirit of St. Louis but to me it always looks sad looking for its owner to come back and fly it. When you fly a scale plane, you become that owner. The great designers make sure the plane is flyable; you can fly a brick with enough hp, but making the plane work and look good is what makes it not a static model.