RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

Man, you just gave me a whole new perspective on the issue.

Joe

RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

@ sps3172,

You raise some good points. It also raises the question, for just whose benefit is it to recruit more competitors? Nearly every club member's seen me fly and had a look at my plane if they're interested enough, I'm not sure I'd be doing them a favour trying to convince them to blow 1/3rd the cost of a new YS engine to travel to a comp for a weekend just so there's one more name on the competitors entry list.

I'm not so sure I agree 100% with people disliking being "beaten", but the discipline aspect of any competitive endevour does take away from the recreational aspect.

I accept that some still receive genuine enjoyment from just getting a plane into the air and getting it back down in one piece, a not so simple task sometimes given the state of some of the planes I've seen people try to fly :-) I almost eny them for that while I'm cursing a trim issue that only rears it's head during one part of one maneuver that I can't mix/trim out.

RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

I think SPS has it nailed.
I am competition oriented. I saw Bill Sheets F3A ship at the club field, I asked if that was the new style Pattern ship, he asked if I was the guy with the Kaos, he said I could fly it at a contest, and a few months later I was a Pattern pilot.
My kids don't like competition, they like the models, the socialization. They all have won some event, flown a bunch of them, but they don't stick with it. Different desires.
Chris...

RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

What we try at my club and seems to have good response, is a Clinic and Contest.
This event is schedule for juts Saturday and it's limited to Sportsman and Intermediate pilots. In the morning (because of the field orientation) we conduct a Clinic with a couple of recognized pattern pilots, who volunteer to teach, clarify and show different aspects of precision flying.
We have an open forum time for questions and answers.
Have lunch and in the afternoon we fly a 2-3- round contest.
The seasoned pilots help and encourage the contestants and everyone have been enjoying the experience.
We sanction the event, give trophies to 3rd. place and the club treasury made 20.00.
Some people who attended the Clinic only, the first year, this year flew.
We fly the pattern as called in the AMA book.
Try it, you may like it and if you want contact me for some more info and printouts that we hand to the attendees.

Good luck,
Rene Grebe
Cedar Park, Texas
District 6

RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

A sort of roundabout answer to bjr 93tz's question about who benefits from more participants...
More participants mean it will be easier to stage a successful local contest. This year, other than the contest sponsored by my own club, the closest contest I'll go to is a 4 1/2 hour drive, with two night hotel stays at all of them. That's expensive. If every club within an hour of me had a few pattern pilots there could be several contests close enough to drive home between days.
More participants, more contests, less expense, more participants...

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that every club will have active pattern flyers but there certainly could be more.

RE: Ideas for an intro pattern class
 

I talked to a couple of guys at the club about why they don't try flying pattern. They are interested but the thing they said was a 2 day contest was to much of a time commitment to hit a contest for them. With that being said why not fly all 6 sportsman rounds in one day and make the sportman class a one day event.