On Friday, December 14, 2012 3:07:25 PM UTC-5, Sean F (F2) wrote:
50 people signing a petition counter your viewpoint is not reality? I think the problem with the current leadership is worse than I imagined.

Well wishers are great. But what makes a competition go are (qualified) pilots with sailplanes. Of 47 signatories, about half are qualified (you need to have been scored in a regional). Of the rest, who is actually even thinking about attending? We don't know: you have not asked. Your assessment of this petition's numbers is -- in my view -- wishful thinking.

I've run the numbers on past contests and referred to them here. That's "reality based" to me. It's a little marginal. The RC sees the same trends I do, sensibly has put in place a procedure that covers all likely scenarios. You guys stamp your feet, disparage the folks that question your (obviously) wishful thinking, claim that you "smell fear" (I loved that one) and wear out your caps lock keys in response. Oooooookaaaaaaay.

Many of us agree with you that the low performance end of sports class causes issues w.r.t. tasking and scoring. One possible solution here is to put your efforts into recruiting *more* low performance guys. Get a dozen of the below FAI CC performance guys to show up and we can run three classes, with the low performance guys in a class of their own. I think just about everyone would be happy with that. I'll bet we could even get some RC action on that one.

Btw... since you are such a fan... why didn't you take the opportunity to run a club class at Ionia? Seems odd. Ah well.

One more constructive suggestion: next time you get the idea to tell someone else how their contest should be run, consider speaking with them (i.e. the organizer / sponsor / CM) privately first and see if you can get them interested in your idea. Karl, btw, has asked the RC for variances on Nationals rules for Mifflin before. He didn't get approved in the case I am thinking of, but the point is that there are plenty of people in this sport who do think creatively about how to build participation and they... aren't... your... adversaries.

Evan Ludeman / T8