Sometimes the moon and stars align in our favor, I have very GOOD news! :-)
We are fortunate to have Keith Throstle as a member of our club. Keith was at our Palmer Memorial contest this weekend flying his beautiful Bearcat. As most of you know, Keith was instrumental in putting the Judges guide in the AMA rule book (with help from others). Kieth is also an influential member of the AMA CL Aerobatic Contest Board. Keith has been involved with our rules for decades.
I met with Keith this morning and he gave me a definitive answer to our landing rules question:
Quote: "What we are doing with our power landings is ABSOLUTLY within the AMA rules. There is NO restriction on this in our AMA rules."
Keith said he will take a personal interest in this and have a written statement come from the Contest Board in the near future. Keith is also on the board of PAMPA and will do the same with our SIG.
He stated that the judges guide he put into our rules came from the FAI judges guide. He had edited out the words that did NOT apply to our AMA flying. The sentence that I quoted from 14.37.2 with the words "...engine-out landing approach..." are from the FAI guide and Keith said he just missed it and it should have been edited out before it got into our AMA judges guide. He said that he would get the wording corrected as soon as he could.
The other wording issue that he said needs correction is at the very beginning of section 14, where it says: "Judging Procedures". That was a misprint. It was written by him and the contest board as: "Judging Guide". He will also get this wording error changed as soon as he can. These are NOT "rule" changes, only corrections in wording errors to the "Judges GUIDE" when the info was converted from the FAI wording over to our AMA rules.
The above is only needed to make the wording match the contest boards original intent, that was to use as much of the FAI GUIDE as we could, while adapting it to reflect our AMA rules.
Kieth was VERY clear that the RULES regarding Landings are in section 13.15. This is the RULES section (NOT section 14). And this (13.15) is the section that CDs use to govern our contests.
It is interesting that Bob Hunt used the Windy example. This is exactly the example Keith used this morning. Keith said the AMA CL contest board has already addressed this landing issue in the Windy case, and the precedent still stands.
As I said above, Keith will get us something in writing on this soon. This will give us someting official to show a CD to help the CD blunt any protests at contests this summer.
Bill, ...... I think your right, it sounds like a "local" rule.
Allan, ..... Your point regarding "KIS" is well taken. Fortunately, this landing method is very simple to set up. (If I can do it, ANYONE can!! ;-). And it does not require any additional equipment, and/or knowledge to make it work properly, it's free, and very KIS.
But I do know what you meant. You were not just referring to this setup, but cautioning us to be careful not to get "carried away" with HIGH ZOOT technology that would put being competitive out of the reach of those that do not have a laptop computer in their tool box, along with a NASA aerospace electronic engineer to run it! ..... Your caution is insightful, and I hope we all keep it in mind as we move forward.
We are very fortunate to have knowledgeable, dedicated and innovative people like Bob&Dean, Mike, Will, and many others who generously share their discoveries with us. They all seem to be sensitive to the importance of KIS. They also go out of their way to keep us all in the loop, so that we all move forward together.
Regards,