GM1
Elite Veteran
Location: Tallahassee, Florida US
| F3C vs 3DWe, as F3C competitors, have been asked about going to a 3D format and the new schedules do have a more 3D flavor BUT the move toward this is fairly slow. Schedules are up for rewrite every few years, we have the schedules for 2006 and 2008 already done, and they are very tough, requiring both inside, outside, and inverted work.
I'm going to stick in an opinion here and want to emphasize, this is my opinion and noone else's so don't go flaming everyone else for this. There has been a lot of discussion about getting more participation in the AMA classes and F3C. One of the major thoughts was we have all of these terrific 3D flyers in the US that have unbelievable eye hand coordination and great spacial orientation. If we made the F3C schedules into a 3D format, all of these guys would flock to F3C and we would be able to bring the best flyers in the world to contest.
I have spoken to many of the top 3D guys in the USA and if you discount Curtis and Alan, we haven't seen a lot of these guys. Ask them and they will tell you that they are not even vaguely interested in competing. Now I have watched these guys at fun flys and they will go out one after another and do progressively more aggressive maneuvers to WOW the crowd so they ARE competitive and show it in their flying style BUT if you formalize the contest , the XFC in the US being the exception, noone shows, so there seems to be NO 3D contests, therefore there are no winners but also no losers. I don't know if that is why 3D is so popular, you cannot be placed in a hierarchy, at least in your own mind. I really have thought about this alot and might be completely wrong, completely right, or the truth somewhere in the middle. I wish I could figure out how to get these guys involved as they are terrific flyers and could be awesome in F3C.
I will be very interested in hearing everyone's take on this. Like I said, some fo these 3D guys are my good friends and can fly rings around me and would do really well in any competitive situation. I guess it could be the time required to go out and practice and learn the schedules is too much, the hovering maneuvers, though very tough, are not spectacular looking but require huge amounts of practice to be accurate, and everyone KNOWS what you are supposed to be doing so you cannot hide a mistake, but DANG!!!, these guys could be SO GOOD!
Anyway, as far as set up for a more 3D schedule: Since we have outside maneuvers coming in 2006, we are all going to be required to change the setup on our models. Where we now run something like -8/+12 we will need something like -10/+12 for the new schedules. I tried some of the new maneuvers with my sport model (-10/+11) and it worked OK. My current contest model (-8/+12) did not have enough negative pitch to make the model drive into a maneuver when inverted so I tried just overdriiving the collective to see if that made a difference and it really did so when I get through with this contest year, I will go back and completely redo my set up to include more negative pitch and make everything symmetrical, probably centered on +1 degree. I think my roll rates will have to increase also as some of the new maneuvers require more. I don't think anyone will continue to run semisymmetrical blades as they, at least the ones I have tested, have some unusual characteristics when G-loaded while inverted.
Gordie
On a dog sled team, if you're not the lead dog, the view never changes. |
