Of course everyone has their take on what is "Classic." For me it is preserving and flying the great and character-filled designs of the past. Hey, the appearance of some of those old Classic designs is what sparked my interest in Stunt in the first place. But, by stipulating that they must be flown using the engines of the past is just not my thing.
If you didn't know better, you might even think I was not serious about it. Ohlsson 23 Sideport for you, too.
But, since you brought it up - you know how much "high power classic" compares to the actual era better than I do. Yes, the airplanes fly better than they did - tremendously better, an order of magnitude better, a completely different deal. What is it, exactly, that you are trying to preserve? Because it certainly isn't the experience of flying like they used to in the day. If it's just the appearance, why bother flying them at all? Just do appearance judging, that takes an hour.
If we want the Classic event to be revived to what it was several years ago, we need to make it achievable for the masses. Let the prop be spun by glow, Ignition, steam, nuclear, electric, or by two chipmunks on a turntable; let's just preserve the great aesthetics of that bygone era for as long as we can. If we become too purist, the the event will diminish even more than it already has.
You want classic to be revived, invent a youth serum. I am almost 60 years old, approaching "old man status", and I was *9* years old in 1970. The only thing I remember about the classic era is that my dad crashed his big red airplane in the parking lot, it turns out it was a Nobler. Classic is falling away because there are ever-fewer people left that even knew about model flying or were alive in the 60's. The pool of people who ever flew in a stunt contest in the 60's is dwindling rapidly, and with a fixed cut-off date, it's only going one direction. That's also why you have both Super 70's and "Rolling Cutoff Classic", whatever we call it.
A 45-year-old man, middle-aged, was born in *1975*. What the heck to they know or care about classic airplanes from the 60's? OTS gets around the same problem to a certain extent because the airplanes are typically dead simple to build and it's treated like a kind of goofy fun-fly. A Classic airplane is just as much investment in time and effort as it it to build a modern airplane and generally doesn't fly nearly as well, and there a plenty of people - you know the type - who treat it like it's the Walker Trophy Flyoff, just every other weekend.
As hard as it might be to believe, I had a youth, too, and I flew my first contest in the *80's*, not the 60's - with a Genesis/ST46.
Why not allow people to make the tail volume 30% larger and chop off most of the wing asymmetry? That, you would be all over, and first in line to tell me how bad it was to be "cheating".
But do something that makes a FAR LARGER difference, like sticking a semi-custom AAC engine in it, and a prop made of materials that would have been exotic on the Lunar Module - A-OK, go about your business, citizen. Yes, the rules allow it - but what is it that you are trying to do, you restrict almost trivial changes in one area, but allow/encourage/"make-it-nearly-impossible-to-compete-otherwise" something VASTLY more important to the end result.
I have no problem with people wanting to win a contest by using the best equipment that is legal, I do that all the time. I have no problem with people wanting to preserve the era as some sort of magic time capsule into their youth, far be it for me to interfere. But, you have to see the cognitive dissonance between those two.
Of course I am not going to propose changing classic (or creating any new event) along the lines I was joking about above. But come on, this is like claiming we are running a classic car show, and allowing fiberglass-body tube-frame funny cars to enter it, and heading off to the drag strip.
Brett
Topic: How Did We Fly These Things? (Read 10505 times)