Now the World Championships are starting. You will not find very many poorly finished planes if any. There is no appearance points in F2B. I have seen some really gorgeous planes in F2B. 
I think the line of reasoning misses the point. You could have a BOM rule without appearance points, or appearance points without BOM. I think the BOM is a lot more important. Getting rid of appearance points would merely take appearance out of the scoring. BOM determines whether or not you can enter the National Championships *at all*. The important thing, to me, is to preserve the standards we have used, and not water down the process or the event. Now, to win, you have to master a huge variety of skills to a very high degree.
It would be entirely possible, without the BOM, for someone to build, adjust, and trim the airplane, hand it to someone, and have them fly a few flights and win. I know *I* could certainly supply the airplane, trimmed, with perfect engine run, for someone, given the right price (don't ask, you can't afford it). There are a large number of people whose competition chances would be greatly improved over what they have now, because most of the airplanes you see now aren't trimmed worth a darn, have unfortunate engine runs, and are otherwise very difficult to compete with. And many of them have higher flying talent (I won't admit to skill, I will stick with talent) than I do. But I regularly beat them and am competitive with anyone because I have managed to do better in the non-flying side of the system.
Now that is all personalized, but it generalizes nicely. One interesting thing about the ratio of appearance points spread to flying points spread (as mentioned above to Dorin's consternation) is that the appearance point spread tended to get much tighter as the the skill level of the competitors increased. That's because the people involved at the higher levels of the event had mastered more aspects of the event - in this case, building and finishing skills.
The same people would have risen to the top without appearance points. Having a BOM, however, ensures that ALL aspects of the event are rewarded. It is absolutely not a "flying contest", it never has been a mere "flying contest", and simply flying the airplane is and has been, to my estimation, hardly over half the total problem of winning stunt contests. I want my national champion to have mastered EVERYTHING associated with the event. Billy is a perfect example - he can fly fantastically well, but you know, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the average 70ish year old man is not going to be a epitome of human physical perfection. H's still almost untouchable on a good day and always a threat because he *has mastered everything associated with the event* to such a degree that even with what must be some additional difficulties in one area are overcome by his superior mastery of everything else. This is the true beauty of the event, the very essence of it.
Stunt without the BOM is a one-dimensional event, and if somehow tomorrow you could go down to the sporting goods store and buy a perfectly trimmed and powered stunt plane for $100 (like you can with a tennis racket) and go learn to fly, it will reward only *one* aspect of the current event. The only reason the PAMPA classes don't degenerate to the same problem is that everyone knows that the end goal is to master things enough to get to expert and ultimately win a National Championship. And there is nothing likely to happen to create perfectly-built, trimmed, and powered ARF for any reasonable money - some of the consumer ARFs are pretty good if you get experts to assemble and trim them, and get a good engine run, but competitive RTFs are many thousands of dollars and rare as hen's teeth.
Before the usual suspects tediously start deconstructing this to make political hay (although I don't see why anyone cares about that any more, I am a lame duck as a PAMPA officer), this is what *I really believe*. If someone doesn't agree that's fine with me, but i will continue to say and act in a way that is in support of what I believe.
Brett
Topic: Nats Appearance Points – Advanced and Open (Read 4450 times)