East Coast Nationals-West Coast Nationals

On Sep 26, 5:32*am, wrote:
snip
East coast/West coast "nationals"- Those are really regional
competitions that should(in my view) not hold the rank and prestige of
nationals. I pointed out a few other concerns in a previous post. I
will be adding this topic to the agenda for the November RC meeting.
Let's hear from some other folks.
UH

As a practical matter we have East/West coast nationals today - they
just run in alternate years instead of the same year. If I recall
correctly, the number of pilots who cross the Mississippi to attend a
contest is quite small - and my gut feel is that it has fallen over
the past 30 years. For instance, a 15M nationals at Mifflin will be
attended predominantly by pilots who live in eastern states and one at
Montague will be attended mostly by pilots who live in western states.
I suspect the higher you are likely to be on the scoresheet the more
willing you will be to travel a long distance for WGC team selection,
etc. But high gas prices plus the constraints on people's vacation
options make it unlikely that you will ever have broad attendance from
both coasts.

So how do various alternatives affect what we are trying to accomplish
with national championships? I believe the goals should be: A) Select
national champions in each class each year, B) Select a WGC team, C)
For the 90+% who don't fall into A or B, to provide a robust forum for
pilots to compete at the highest level - which depends on having a
field of high-quality competitors that is a big as can be
accomodated. I think there are "official" objectives in the rules
somewhere.

My personal view is that if there isn't a nationals on the side of the
country where they live pilots typically pursue one of three
alternatives: 1) attend a regional (or super-regional) contest that is
closer to home, 2) fly in a nationals for a different class (Std -
15M, 15M - 18M, 18M - Open, or any of the above to Sports), 3) sit
it out (I don't know the numbers, but this would be the most
worrisome).

The idea of a East/West nationals doesn't seem to satisfy any of the
three objectives very well. I think the result will be twice as many
national contests of roughtly half the size (maybe a bit bigger if the
number of pilots pursuing strategies 1 and 3 exceed the number of
pilots pursuing strategy 2) East/west nationals confuse the idea of a
national champion. They dilute our ability to choose a team because
they compress the seeding by having more contests with fewer
competitors. Finally, I think having small nationals significantly
diminishes the experience for everyone from the top of the scoresheet
to the bottom.

What are our alternatives - I have a couple of ideas.

1) Ensure that nationals for adjacent classes are on opposite sides of
the country so the maximum number of pilots have a chance to compete
in a Nationals each year. The placement of Sports and 18M seem to be
the most critical to me as the are the relief valves for a lot of Std
and 15M pilots. I think the Open Class guys are in a bit of a bind
because they only have Sports and I don't think it's a very good forum
for ships that big.

2) Re-evaluate how we set maximum seeding points top to bottom. I
think you could come up with a formula based on the number of pilots
and the average seeding of, say, the top 8 or 10. This also eliminates
the need to go through an administrative procedure to declare a
regionals "super" or not - if you get enough top pilots the maximum
seeding points allocated goes up on a continuous scale. The benefit in
this context is that if you can have a regional contest each year in
the east and the west AND you can get a national-caliber group of
pilots to fly, you can get near-national level seeding out of your
performance. I think Parowan and Perry fall into this category today.

3) Increase the ability to combine adjacent classes in regionals, with
some handicapping if necessary. This is on the ballot and proposal 2)
above creates some additional incentive to do so in practice.

Reactions welcome...

9B