This will make the anti BOM people very happy.
But every change has a consequence.. Maybe we should perform maneuvers in any order that we want... The judges would just love that!
But I have another question... FAI is going to eliminate K factors.
I have never liked K factors because everyone does the same maneuvers, therefore from take off to landing there is no change in difficulty for any pilot. It is not like diving where you can choose you dives.
But here is the BIG question: Does no K factor mean that each maneuver is worth only 10 points? Does that mean that scores will be given in 0.1 increments? That makes the USA system of 40 points max look a whole lot better.
Well, for good or bad, the FAI *is not* going to eliminate the K-factor. I've put in my 2¢ on that topic to the irritation of all involved, and I don't want to go off on another rant about it.
Other than the general creep of FAI into AMA, I don't see how this effects BOM one way or another. FAI not getting rid of K-factors is actually a positive as far as keeping the AMA and FAI separate.
It seems that the Pattern that was brilliantly installed by George Aldridge and others is slowly being torn apart by people who want a personal change.
Do a maneuver out of order... that hurt ME... change it.
I forgot a hand signal before I started the pattern... that hurt ME... change it.
(People look at me funny because I still signal as a courtesy to the judge telling them I am starting the pattern on the upcoming lap)
I don't work as hard to finish my airplane and got less appearence points... that hurt ME... change it.
I don't build my airplane and got no appearance points because some judge actually asked me if I built the airplane... that hurt ME... change it.
I am so disgusted about the endless trivial changes, that I almost don't care anymore
I agree that such arguments are tiresome, but in this case it certainly wasn't a factor. Keith Trostle submitted this and championed the change, and he is hardly of the nature you are describing above. I think this change was a bad idea but I don't fault him for having an idea and pursuing it. It was done on principal.
And the original rules were not exactly confusion-free - in fact, Keith has stated, and I have some evidence of this too, that the 2008 pattern point rules are not the way George had intended them. Peabody tangentially refers to it, but the current pattern points rules require all maneuvers be attempted *and completed* for pattern points to be awarded (there is no ambiguity in that). Initially all you had to do was attempt all the maneuvers in order, not complete them. Until the clarification that they all had to be attempted and completed, pattern points were a continual source of argument, not as bad as in OTS but still pretty bad.
As another example, the vaunted "5-foot" radius was, and George admitted this, a guess/screwup. They put it in there because they guessed that it was about what they were doing. Very shortly afterwards, everybody realized that it wasn't remotely possible, but no one ever submitted a proposal to go back and change it.
I have a few I am going to submit next time around (in addition to the return to the 2008 pattern points rule) - change "wind direction" to "suggested wind direction" {to eliminate the tiresome argument that the wind direction is somehow *required*} in the maneuver diagrams, change the dropping parts in flight rule to give a zero instead of an attempt, and a few others.
So there are perfectly legitimate reasons to change the rules. I don't care for this particular change either, but there's no doubt that the motivations were sincere and reasoned.
BTW, of course you can't just fly the maneuvers in any order. If anything the penalties for flying maneuvers out-of-order can be even more severe with the new rules, depending what you do, at least in Keith's interpretation of the rule.
Brett
Topic: Are they Really killing pattern points next year? (Read 11468 times)
