All,
I would like to discuss the new airspace Control Judging requirement that will be effective the 2007 IMAC Seasion. I do not want to see arguements of if it is right or not, or will it work or not. It is an official rule. What I would like to discuss is how do you intrepret it, how should it be judged, what counts as a down grade, what would a 10 look like, what would a zero look like, or what would a 5 look like. And manuever by manuever how would we need to fly our sequence to score high in(for example) Sportsman. Below is the official Cut of the rule:

"Dangerous" Dan Powell

My initial feeling on this is that it will be treated like the sound score. It will be on the scoresheet but most CDs won't use it. The difficulty that I see is how does one derermine the difference between say a 6 score and an 8 score? Advanced and Unlimited in the past few years have been very tight classes with the top 3 in each contest having a 100 point or less spead. So lets take Unlimited with the 15K and 4 rounds. With the throw away, thats 450 raw points available. This could very well cost some guys a contest. The judging of this needs better defined criteria to avoid being overly subjective.


Shawn

Shawn,
I agree with what you are saying. I have CD'd 6 contests. Because the upper classes are so close this could easily cost somebody a contest. If a pilot gets second place by a few points and the first place pilot does not have a pilot/instrument panel, then the second place pilot is going to ensure that the first place pilot received the penality. There has been a lot of effort to standardize Judging and IMAC contests in general. Through the 6 contests I have CD'd I have seen improvment.

This rule is official and all Contest Directors should enforce it. It is also my concern as how to tell the difference between a 6 and a 8. Anything visual is always going to be subjective.

If I am reading this correctly you are not judging on how physically big or small a sequence is flown. You are judging how well the pilot positions his manuevers so the judge can see them. If I am reading it correctly a 1/4 scale plane would have to fly a tighter sequence to present the manuevers to the judges than a 40% plane.

I have seen pilots purposly fly a spin manuever with a lot of altitude to hide the fact that they are cheating the break.


IMHO if the judge can relax and clearly see each part of each manuever then the pilot would recieve a high score. If the judge has to strain and move around in his chair to be able to see the manuevers then the pilot would receive a low score.

Consistancy is the Key, that is the reason I started this thread was to get a feeling of what the difference between a 6 and an 8 is, and hopefully a 6 in one region will be a 6 in another region.


I do not believe this rule came lightly, our elected leadership IMAC BOD put a lot of thought discussion and work into this. Our F&J seminar is coming up soon and I would like to get a feeling on how to properly judge this score so we can standardize our Region.

Keep the ideas and comments comming.

Hey Dan.

My big question here is how do we "interpret" footprint. There is no designation to how big the box should be, should the box be bigger for a 50% plane than a 25% plane?? By the same token, a 40% plane can easily be seen over 1/4 mile and farther away, where as the 25% plane gets real small, sooner. I find this very ambiguous.

So IMO , this is an attempt to keep pilots from flying in the next county by penalizing the ones with a low score, and rewarding those who fly closer in. How to judge this, FAIRLY, has to be very difficult. Again, different standards apply to different sized aircraft going by the rule (visibility). I don't believe vertical heights are a factor here, as much as the amount of geography a pilot uses, ei end manuevers and back of the box manuevers.

If a pilot stays reasonably close, then the pilot will get a 10. If a 40% gets a little small, then downgrades will occur, however, I believe most judges will be hard pressed to justify in their own mind the difference between a 5, 7 or 3. This will probably turn into a 10 or 0 kinda thing as judges work through in their own minds how to be fair.

How to judge it fairly, could be achieved partially, by the CD or District VP at the first couple contests demonstrating at the Pilots meeting what different size aircraft look like at the point in distance out, downgrades should be handed out, as well as where manuevers should be placed (end and back of box) for a 10 or 0. This will take time and effort, as well as a willingness to learn from all members and pilots. Time will tell.

Ed

I don't think it requires any box definitions, The criteria is fly your sequence so the judges can easily see it. In doing this it shrinks the box. If the judge can easily see your manuevers then you would score high. If a judge has to squint, lean out of his chair, because the manuever is being flown so it is hard to judge then they would recieve a lower score.

If you offset your center manuevers because of the sun, so that you and the judges can see them better, would this give you a higher score. The criteria states "fly the figures to be optimally judged".

good points

keep the discussion comming

Why not judge each maneuver for visability? 10 maneuvers, 10 points. That way if one move got overextended out one end of the airspace or maybe too deep in the box, one point deducted. Seems fairly easy if it's looked at in that way. Maybe not?? I am not suggesting anything, just asking.

not a bad idea!

I agree Dan!!

The key to judging in the gray areas is to create a system and use it consistently. We do that with downgrades on the shapes of loops because there's no black and white downgrade.

Digger44, I like your idea. If six of the maneuvers were flown in a spot that made it easy for me to judge, it's a 6. If all ten maneuvers were flown in airspace that made it easy to judge, it's a 10. Very simple and consistent!!

This is a totally subjective rule for which no defined criteria exist. Judges can do what they want to. I hated it from the first time I heard about it, but oh well. A contestant has no method to challenge a score he has received since there are no criteria for it. Each judge is free to assign a score based on their own interpretation of how well the airspace was used. I argued for a 0-5-10 score but wiser heads than mine decided to parse it to 1 point increments. Yes, that was a 7 and not 6 or an 8 for airspace use. Bravo!!

Nice idea Dean 1 point per figure. Works nicely for 10 figure sequences. Now tell me how you handle an Unknown with 12 figures???

Oh well. At least we got proper judging of loops back into the rules and stopped allowing judges to use their own criteria there.

Not anymore. New rule re-instated the criteria for quantitative judging of loops.

1 point deduction for each maneuver that isn't flown in airspace that makes it easy for me to judge. If I get down to zero, I stop.

I've never seen a 12 maneuver Unknown, but I guess anything's possible.

Or you could devide the 10 points by 12 and deduct 8.33 points per violation and round up to the nearest whole number. To much trouble though. I still like one point per maneuver modified , until you run out of points. [sm=thumbs_up.gif]

It's as good as anything else I suppose. It really is nothing more than an impression score written into the rules, so it is what it is. Time will tell if it does anything. The alleged purpose of the rule is to reduce footprint, we'll see if it does that.

The single thing that could be done to reduce footprint is to remove rollers from Knowns. Put them in Unknowns if you want them. Rollers are flown HUGE by everyone, they consume vast amounts of real estate the way we fly them. Plus since they are in the Known they get flown at least 6 times in every contest by every pilot. 50 guys at a contest and you have 300 times that you can wander over the horizon. Put them just in the Unknown and that number is cut to 50. Makes flying them well more important as well since they are in the Unknown, which you can't drop. Plus they take a LONG time to fly in general and using them only in Unknowns would actually speed up contests. Another radical lunatic fringe idea to be sure.

If a pilot flies a manuever in the sun and can not be, quote..(optimally judged), should/would that be criteria for a downgrade?

Yep, just like the presentation score. Any "subjective" judging has and will cause issues at contests. Maybe not an all out argument with a judge or a CD but LOTS of behind the flight line comments and complaints.

I had the opportunity to judge a round at a contest during the presentation score days. I later that day scribed for another judge for that same class. I got to see all the presentaion scores and they were all over the board. Same pilots, same style of flying but a huge variety of "subjective" scores. A friend of mine got a Zero from one judge on the presentation score and a Ten from the other.....???? Don't see how this airpace control score will be any different. But.......it is what it is

Oh, by the way, one of the goals of the presentation score was to prevent the pilots from flying "Big". As most of us think back, it didn't work.

It is for me. The pilot didn't show the control to place the plane where I could easily judge it.

But how is the pilot who flew below the sun supposed to know that his plane flew "though" the sun from the judges view point? (not disagreeing with anyone.....just pointing out another concern about this new rule.)

Also, what if a pilot flies close and tight that everything seems rushed? He might have good control of the airspace and not be flying "big" but the judges might ding him for rushing. We had this last year where a pilot flew well but quite fast and very tight. (futunately I grab a scribe but the other judge was having a tough time keeping up). As soon as he'd go wings level, he only drew a 20 - 30 ft line and pulled up into his next maneuver. As long as he showed us a discernable line we could not downgrade him. With this new rule a pilot could indeed be downgraded for flying to close, but the real question is how is a pilot supposed to know if he's too close, or too far? How does he know how to practice? If a pilot does fly tight, do I ding him one point or four points.......or six?

Interesting question. Most pilots would handle this by saying that they are displacing a figure due to the sun, etc. As a CD I tried hard not to put pilots or judges in the position of having to worry about this. We had fields where we would wait to start so the sun was NOT in the eyes of the judges or pilots.

I would hope that no judge would downgrade the airspace score due to sun issues. That is not the intent of the rule

Too harsh in my mind. First, this is really a CD problem. The CD should control the flight schedule so the pilots cannot fly in the sun. You know that we did this for years at North Vegas and Riverside. So at those fields if I had started flying earlier you would downgrade the pilot for not avoiding the sun?? Like I said, harsh.

Yes. Why didn't they pull sooner or later. It would be a one point deduction on one Airspace Control score. Not too harsh. The pilot that controls his plane better so I can judge it doesn't get the 1 point deduction on the Airspace Control score.

Dean you know perfectly well that if the sun is an issue there are MANY times that it is not as simple as pulling sooner or later. And again, this is a CD issue. Why has the CD let it happen such that the judges have to stare into the sun?? Why are you so quick to look for downgrades. Remeber at the heart of all of the rules is to give the benefit of the doubt to the pilot.

You wouldn't have wanted to be a judge at this years Masters.

There is more wisdom in those words than you know!!

How could this be a one point deduction? Could it be more or less. There isn't a 1 point per 15 degree rule on this that I'm aware of. There is no judging criteria on this issue at all. 0 for worst 10 for best and throw darts at the rest to see what you get. This is the type of problems that I could see happening all year long.

This is a very good discussion!!!

Rick

I had the good fortune to scribe for one of the rounds in the morning.

To say the sun was brutal would be an understatement. [sm=shades_smile.gif]