No one else volunteered, so I will be the Event Director again. Given the other things happening in my life NATs Planning has rarely cracked the Top 100 on my things to do list; thus I am about 6 months behind where I was last year. However it is starting to come together.
* John Paris has graciously volunteered to be the Assistant ED
* Howard Rush will be updating his NATs Program that helps the administrative process flow so much easier.
* We need a minimum of 8 judges, and can use up to a maximum of 12. By that measure so far we have a skeleton crew:
Mark Overmier - Chief Judge
Dale Barry Doug Moon
Joan Cox Steve Moon
Wes Eakin Doug Patterson
Mike Eber John Simpson
Craig Gunder Steve Smith
In addition to the talented crew shown above there are a few other "maybes" out there who might yet be able to commit. Still there is room for more, if you think you can help out we can use you!
* Will Hinton will be the lead Appearance judge, aided by Jim Lynch and Charlie Reeves.
* Tom Dixon & Don Ogren will again be leading the charge to gather Specs on all the competitors flying equipment
* I have not heard from him directly but anticipate that Gene Martine will again be taking a boatload of pictures and producing a Photo CD.
We had a pretty successful event last year, expect more of the same process-wise. Two changes I want to make:
* I want to award the Concours Trophy at the 180 Building while all the models & modelers are present. I think this is the BEST forum to make this award.
* On Final Five day, we will dispense with the ritual of drawing flight orders one round at a time. Instead we will draw (via RNG) one round and the flight order will be ASSIGNED in a way to average out the flight order. Howard Rush put a posting showing how that will work here:
http://stunthanger.com/smf/open-forum/nats-stunt-flight-order-scheme/The rationale is that by the time you get to the Top Five finals each flyer has a 1 in 5 chance at drawing a particular flight position. Thus historically there have been numerous cases where a given flyer has drawn a string like 1-1-2 or 4-5-5. While we hope our competitive processes are robust enough to overcome such things, the fact is that we can actually take control of that situation in a more equitable manner. Scrambles like this have been used at numerous events over the years with favorable reviews. It can be difficult to implement because it varies via the number of flyers involved. However by Finals day we have a fixed number of flyers and the group is small enough that there can be a repeat of flight positions using a draw or RNG. We will give it a shot, however, I am NOT naïve enough to say it will silence all the grumbling..!
The Banquet is up in the air. Last year we moved it from Saturday to Friday and attendance did increase, but we also lost 3 of the Top 5 finalists and their families. Worse, we lost over $700 which (believe it or not) was an improvement over previous years. Fact is the PAMPA budget even carries a line item EXPECTING a $1500 loss on the banquet. I do not expect the banquet to be a money maker but we cannot tolerate it being a big loss either. To budget a $1500 loss represents the dues of 21+ PAMPA members - that is unacceptable. I am getting some help from Allen Goff on this, he set up the Scale banquet at another site that worked very well. I also think the banquet succeeds or fails based on the number of people attending. Monday is the day that has the MOST people in town for the CLPA events. From an attendance standpoint Monday night would be the best and it will be a WELCOMING Banquet instead of a FAREWELL & Awards banquet.
If we have a banquet I will post news here.