Lee,

Look at my breakdown earlier. If you're going to compare airplanes, do it fairly. You can't tell me that an IMAC airplane is cheaper than a pattern plane. I listed the most expensive componenents that you could possibly put in an airplane, and at retail prices, the pattern plane was still cheaper. It's a chunk of change, but that's a lot of technology in a little package. It's not a toy like I believe some IMAC guys believe it is. I think the hangup comes from a pattern plane being an object with a single purpose- to fly precision. An IMAC airplane can be setup to do both sequences and 3D relatively well.

Also, Sportsman is designed to be able to fly whatever you brought. They did it this way so that you could IMO, it's not hard to make weight with a pattern plane. Sure you have to use a little bit of common sense, but no more than is reasonable for anyone to posess. I implore you to come to a contest, you'll find it's not nearly as bad as you think it is. If you notice how many guys that are contributing seriously to this thread, you'll see that most of us fly Masters (myself included). That should be indicative of how important weight is to people in Sportsman and Intermediate. Discussions like this aren't commonplace at local contests, at least in D2 anyway. I think you're trying to scare yourself away before you see how it really is.

And Chris, yes, the whole world is governed by FAI rules. Come countries aren't big enough to have a bunch of pilots to fill supporting classes like the US does. I think that the US needs to by in large follow FAI rules as well, as that's what pattern is. I don't think we need to follow things to a 'T', and obviously AMA is a different animal, but the rules for airplanes should at the very least be similar. Otherwise you're going to create something different. IMAC can do its own thing as that was something that was created to fill a niche here.