What you are referring to is improvements in existing technology for which I 100% agree and Amen to the travel. That is probably the largest problem we face. What I was referring to, and probably did not explain properly, is when a new technology or gizmo becomes the norm.
I was shocked at the cost of the "state of the art" piped engines when I came back from the wilderness but I was told I needed one to be competitive. Probably true. I could afford the LA46 size ship, which was a doubling of power compared to what I knew, but the performance of the piped ships in the hands of the better fliers is simply out of reach. I am not a big fan of flying other peoples planes so I have not had the opportunity to fly one. That is probably a mistake and I may relax that a bit if asked to try it but I will never be the one to ask.
I am still perplexed why we are constantly trying to eliminate the non-flying skills we use to have to acquire to win but it is not my turn any longer to define the sport.
I am not sure what the last bit is about, I don't see very many people trying to do that, if anything, we are continually fighting to keep it more-or-less the same way. The stunt rule in question was intentionally crafted to make the entire idea fall into the "neat, but more-or-less useless" category. I would probably support a proposal to eliminate ALL RC means in control line, and I have been surprised that no one has made any effort to eliminate on-board feedback control of the aerodynamic controls. I am OK with it on the engine/motor, because all Igor's system does is even up the odds between electric and IC, where such feedback control has long been part of the event, back to the 4-2 break.
I know I have spent less in "constant" dollars on equipment like engines/pipes/props than I used to, and it has the added advantage of having some notion that it will work when you need it to. The biggest waste of time and money I can imagine is spending $500 going to a weekend two-day contest, and then having your engine not run properly, or only once in a while, and also having everyone else in the same boat, generating random results. If anything, current systems *save* money and time on wasted activity. Fuel was relatively expensive in the good old days, and you burned it like it came from a tap, with the competitive fliers taking a thousand or more flights a year- which at ST46 rates, it something like 50 gallons a year.
I wouldn't deny, however, that modern equipment and techniques have changed the nature of the competition. Many more people are able to be competitive than they were before, because the former winning approach of the black art of making engines work and the extreme amount of effort and practice required to learn how to work around performance limitations made it so only a few people who adopt stunt as a way of life could possibly compete. Now, you can just buy a system, and if you follow the directions* you are going to have something with so much performance margin, all you have to do is stand there and fly it around. That only happened on rare special moments back in the "Good Old Days", and on those days, whoever managed it usually won. That makes it so almost anyone can do it, as long as they approach it logically and rationally.
I might also suggest, gently, that you might be jumping to conclusions about the nature of current competition. I am not sure who you are flying with on a regular basis, and which big contests you have attended and been deeply engaged in, to be able to see what is really going on and what the likely winners are actually doing. If you haven't had those types of exepriences, I would ask you to reserve judgement.
Precisely because of the widespread availability of "overkill" power and trim knowledge, many people can be *very good* stunt fliers without actually knowing much about what they are doing, whereas before, you had to master a huge array of things even to be reasonably good. These guys fly better than their equivalents from ancient times - but they have the same chance against David and Paul that their counterparts did against McFarland and Gialdini- that is, *no chance at all*.
Brett
*note that a large number of people still fail to or refuse to follow the directions, and *still* shoot themselves in the foot, the "engine setup tips" forum being a case in point. Its' like going back in time to 1975.