2001 a Space Odessy is history as well as it's sequel 2010. The Space Shuttle is nearing the end of it's shelf life and while We still do not have missions to Mars let alone Jupiter, the world is rushing towards the future at a breakneck pace. Yet CLPA is stuck in this time warp. Went to see about joining Pampa, just to find that our so called Premier SIG (Special Interest Group) still insists on only accepting checks or money orders via Snail Mail or the equally obsolete FAX!   I have not had paper bank checks since 2006!

Seems to me PAMPA wants to discourage new membership. Cripes, Nowadays 10 year old kids with lemonaide stands have paypal accounts and online payment forms! Sorry I guess PAMPA will have to do with one less member.

Then all this push back on ARC's and ARF's, but that is not enough. Now proposing not only stagnation but pushing the clock back. Reading how kits by people are now to be considered illegal. Some saying that neglecting to turn the clock back to 1970 would result in $4000.00 CLPA airplanes. Now that is rich, we could only wish and rejoice if CLPA would rate the construction and sale of a significant number of $4000 CLPA models. That would mean that CLPA was generating a high amount of interest and participation, that it has breached the main stream or at least rose to the level of RC.

I'd love to see CLPA vibrant enough to warrent $4000 models as routine. But wait, it is all relative isn't it? We have had $400 CLPA specialty engines for a quite a while now. The upper eschelons more than likely own several. Lets do the math. $300 for a top laser cut CLPA kit, $400 for the motor, $150 for the pipe and related hardware, say another $200 for misc. parts like carbon fiber props, landing gear, tank, etc.

So we are already at 1K+ for a top CLPA model. Even if you discount the cost of the actual model, then just add up all of the specialty tools required to build a top CLPA model, betcha that comes close to that 1K plus figure. So add it up 1K for the plane and 1K for the tools, and the calculated hourly rate for the time spent.

 Now for some people thats not a big deal, for others it is rent, gas, and food for the month. Seems like the guys with the 1K planes are afraid they'll be out spent, not necessarily only out flown. Giving Joe Modesto grief about his kits is a bunch of paranoid BS. Equating his Wing skins as excessive prefabrication. His wing skins are no different than supplying Silk Span or Monokote in a kit to cover the super structure of a wing. Or supplying sheet balsa to skin a foam core. Are you going to outlaw Silk Span or other wing coverings?

The cop out to all this is the excuse that these archaic rules will only effect a tiny number of modelers. Yea, just the ones that every CLPA participant hopes to be. No one enters a contest at any level with the burining desire of being mediocre. And that is what these outmoded rules foster, they foster a consistant source of mediocrity. Just like not everyone is rich or can afford the 1K airplanes, even fewer have the luxury of a full wood working shop, or vaccum bagging equipment, or composite layup equipment or curing ovens, paint sprayers and compresors. Have copious amounts of time, to build and practice, unburdened by family or work commitments.

On the contrary these rules effect every modeler. We do not have a qualifying system, where contestants have to work up through the ranks, only advancing when they have reached predefined standards of performance and other criteria. If you want to enter in the open or expert class then all you need to do is pay your money and sign up. You are not turned away, except unless someone says that you did not conform to some BOM rule. Sorry Charlie, you can fly but not that airplane. Why? just because you are not a one man model manufacturing company. Only one man model manufacturing companies can participate. So how is this rule only effecting a handful of comptitors? In other circles you can enter and fly but you automatically get penalized, No appearance points. Again prejudice towards the one man model manufacturing companies.

All modelers are discriminated against by these rules, you say, sorry but no matter what, you just will never be able to compete on a level playing feild against those who are one man, machine and wood shop master craftsmen with unlimited time on their hands.

So it is no surpirse, that with urban sprawl, greater restrictions on land use, less space and higher litigation, CLPA which uses less space, is inherantly safer, and more urban friendly is slowly gentrifying, stagnating when it should be more attractive and vibrant. Rules that ensure that only a very specific and limited range of people can even enter and potentially win at the top most level of this activity are the direct cause.

Heck it costs 58 bucks to subsidize the AMA's representation of it's RC interests. If you think that 58 bucks is for the bastard stepchild CLPA you are sadly mistaken.

Don't get me wrong, craftsmanship and artistic talent are terrific, and should be appreciated. But to impose ruules that artificially elevate the significance of the former, devalues the merits of such talent. Besides who can be prouder than the individual that beats the $4000 airplane with their own handiwork.

The 70's are over 30 years gone, time to let them go.

Geeze, here I am building and flying pre-1953 airplanes out of balsa and Ambroid, covered with silk and dope, and with cutout tissue numbers and letters.  How is it possible that I am having fun?

I remember specifically one beautiful summer evening in the '60's as a teenager, sitting at my flying field waiting for my friends to turn up so I could fly, chewing on a piece of grass contemplating what the future would hold for modelling, and me come to that matter, and now I'm in that future so to speak, I don't like it!
I could go on at length as to what it is I don't like about modern life, but it's all been said and debated to death, and very, very little changes.
The field I was sitting in is now under a dual carriage way, with huge factory shops all around, (sigh) progress, isn't it wonderful?  
A tiny piece of original fence and hedge that I was leaning against 45 years ago still remains on the grass verge, I sometimes smile when I pass it So I'll continue  
to build my own models from balsa and silk and dope, and feel pity for those that don't, can't or can't be bothered! (I have tried to help them in the past).

Cheers