Thank you for the clarification. I am sorry I worded my post as I did, I did not mean any disrespect. I was only hopeful that they had relaxed the ruling a little. (I knew they did't, just wishful thinking on my part ;-) The reason for this hope is that Will Moore is working with the Yatsenko's to make electric powered Sharks and I have been helping them with the E system setup. Will flys a beautiful RTF wet Shark now and he loves it, but of course he wants one in electric. The combination of their beautiful RTF and E power will be very popular in the rest of the world. We are realistic enough to know that they won't sell many in the USA.
They should be able to sell all they want. The vast, vast majority of contest flights in the US occur were there is negligible impact on the score for flying an ARF/RTF for bordering on 40 years.
People have been (intentionally and not) distorting the story on the "legality" of ARF/RTFs for years in an attempt to get rid of BOM so that a tiny few people can get a cheap and easy path to a National Championship, or more commonly, and easy way to make huge profits selling obscenely expensive models to people unwilling to meet the high standards that winning a National Championship places on an *individual*. The PAMPA survey on that topic was overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the standards for the event.
I am not personally offended, and you shouldn't need to apologize for your opinion. And respect is not required, it's up to you. But the suggestion that we would allow RTFs or ARFs to fly in the Nats is, to me, intrinstically disrespectful. It means that the standards established and met by all the previous competitors/contenders/champions are pointless, meaningless, or otherwise not important (otherwise, why would we change them). I can think of nothing more disrespectful to the event than that. Once again, you are perfectly well entitled to your opinion and to express it in any way you want, and to try to convince others to agree. But as far as I am concerned (and I know I speak for many others) the entire idea is a slap in the face to the people who have managed to meet the current standards, and not just the winners, everybody.
That's why this topic always causes a controversy - nearly all the long-time competitors want the standards maintained, and people who don't participate or are only marginally involved, want to change all the rules on the speculation that it will be, somehow, "better".
I think it's a sad thing that the so-called "rest of the world" (i.e. a few small (compared to the US) factions who manage to play the FAI rules process like a fiddle -and wait to you get a load of the way they ran the WC this time...) has chosen to lose a huge part of point of the event. It's not something I think we should emulate. I emphasized the word "individual" above on purpose. This seems to be the root of the issue. Non-BOM models, particularly RTFs, turn the event in a "team" activity instead of an individual activity. Even in the various groups (West Coast Conspiracy, Randy's group, Teh various Texas groups) who nominally share data and coaching, the pilot has to *build the airplane*, *paint the airplane*, *trim the airplane*, *power the airplane*, and *fly the airplane* themselves. Unless you do that, you don't (and in my opinion, shouldn't) claim that you are a "National Champion". It's the most challenging event there is, near as I can tell. Compare to the various "team approaches" in RC Pattern, for example. I like it to be the most challenging event, and that's the way ALL modeling events should be. I won't nor do I feel any need to apologize for that, and apparently the vast majority agrees with me.
Brett