Pampa Critique Sheets

[Stuntflyn]

I have been looking for a vector-based PAMPA Critique Sheet on this site and others. I have found several raster-based files (.jpg,.png, etc.), but the image quality still wasn't very good. When a vector-based drawing is exported to .PDF format, the image quality is much better.

We have our 2019 Paul Sequira Stunt Camp coming up this weekend and since the critique sheets I previously had looked like a copy of a copy of a copy, I decided to make my own. I am lucky my business requires me to have the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite of applications, so I have both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat Pro as part of the suite.

This PDF was made using Illustrator CC (vector-based graphic program), so once I had the drawing done, I simply did a "Save As" to an Acrobat Pro .pdf file.

Please have a look at it to see if anyone thinks I missed anything, I can make corrections if needed. If all looks good, feel free to use it as you see fit. It prints really nice and clear.

Some people like critique sheets and some don't. While they are of some use during an actual flight to note errors, where they really shine in my opinion is when you use them on a video of one of your flights. Video allows you to go back and forth during the maneuvers, so the accuracy of the errors you note on a critique sheet while watching the video can be very helpful.

I can have any of the Adobe products as part of the Creative Cloud suite since I pay for the subscription. Many are not much use to me since I am not a software developer, but I have heard Adobe After Effects can add the "flight path trails" as most of us have seen some of the European flyers use. Anyone ever try that?

I know there is Windows program to do the "flight path trails", but I am a Mac user. I do run VirtualBox on my Mac with a licensed copy of Windows 7, just not sure I want to go down that road if After Effects can accomplish something similar.

[Dan McEntee]

   Well I downloaded it and will print some off in hopes of getting some use out of them. The only thing I don't see is on the hour glass, and that is how wide the top and bottom should be. And maybe as a help to someone that wants to try using these, how would you mark it up? Maybe mark one up for a simulated intermediate or advanced flight, scan and post that? Do you have a particular type of short hand or abbreviations to use. I think I have the original PAMPA booklet of forms with a critique sheet in it but finding the booklet is the main issue!
   Nice work!
    Dan McEntee

   PS for an after thought; maybe post some from the contest this weekend? No names have to be used!!

[Stuntflyn]

Hi Dan,

Good question, but a hard one. Per AMA, most maneuvers are to be flown at 45 degrees (triangles, loops, etc.) or at 90 degrees (verticle eights, hourglass, etc.). In the case of a triangle or hourglass, since the triangles are to be equilateral triangles, I think that means if you were to look at the control line circle from a birds-eye perspective, the width of the triangles and hourglasses would be like taking a 45 degree pie slice out from the circumference of the circle.

To further compound the issue, the width of a triangle or hourglass will naturally be dependent on the length of lines you are flying with, since these will affect the circumference of the flying circle and thus the "width" of the maneuvers. There would be quite a bit of difference in the width of the pie slice if you were flying 60 foot lines compared to 70 foot lines. Technically, every little increment of line length difference will change the circumference of the flying circle. Doooink . . . my brain is already starting to swim 

All these maneuvers crammed on to a single 8.5 X 11 page doesn't leave much room for "marking up". I think the most important part of critiquing is marking up areas where the 45 degrees height was not met, where corners are not 90 degrees, where circles are not round, where anything overhead doesn't bisect the circle and where you have overlapping maneuvers or missed intersections. I think adding more factors to the critique sheet might take away from the area where you need to do the markups.

We have rocket scientists, engineers and very experienced judges on this forum who could probably explain this a bit better, but I don't think the critique sheet is some magic thing where you can instantly start flying better. My guess is two judges critiquing the same flight might not see the exact same errors as each other. Like I mentioned earlier, I think the best use of this tool is doing your markups while watching a video of the flight so you can go back and forth on the video looking for all the errors, though certainly there is some value in having someone markup the sheet while you are actually flying - better than nothing.

If someone has a good way to improve this sheet, I am happy to make changes, but we need to be careful about the sheet getting too confusing. I will certainly post a few of them after this weekends Stunt Camp. Good idea for those who may not typically use these sheets. We will be doing some video as well, so maybe I could have one of the judges critique the flight in real time and then critique the flight using video. My guess is many more errors would be found after critiquing the video.

Good question.