Competition Flying - NRC, NARAM, FAI

If you have been following the conversation on the NAR forum about competition flying, the gist of the argument for making the changes to the NRC seems to come down to an explanation that NRC flying and NARAM participation has been in long term decline and that something had to be done.

The answer that is proposed is a combination of reducing the events flown largely to FAI SD, PD, HD and BG while at the same time adding a mentorship program to coach people in the skills to fly competition.

Now, we are not a big competition flying club and I can see many reasons why this might be. After all, there are many aspects of rocketry that one can pursue within the hobby and competition is only one of many. Certainly, we fly a lot of rockets, just not much competition.

So I am curious. Would we see more competition flying if the events were reduced to FAI SD, PD, HD and BG and these were flown each year? For information, FAI SD and PD require a 40mm diameter rocket of 500mm length. FAI HD requires a gyrocopter carried aloft by a 40mm rocket. FAI BG is roughly the same as NAR R/G.

If the section established some sort of mentorship/instructional effort for competition flying, would this bring about more competition flying? What might such a program look like?

Thank you for your thoughts.

Regards,

Stephen

I was about to build my entry for 1/2A streamer duration this year, but the last-minute rule change to FAI rules (sort-of, this is S6 1/2A rather than S6A, right?) put a stop to that. The rigid FAI restrictions on body diameter and length require very specialized construction techniques. I’m not interested in committing to learning them. If I can’t fly competitively with commercial body tubes and nose cones, then I’m just not interested enough to put forward the effort to build and fly an event. 

I think the Pink Book revision to NRC was a great step forward, and it’s taken a couple of years for the change to sink in and motivate me to engage in competition flying again. Perhaps that’s true for others, and maybe the NAR just needs to stick with the new rules for a while? I don’t have any objection to populating NARAM with FAI events, but for the NRC competition I think it’s just too specialized and challenging to engage many sport flyers.

It’s bad enough that most Pink Book events require pistons to be competitive at the national level. I’ve made my peace with not competing at that level, and instead will settle for simply launching from a tower. Fixed-diameter towers for BT-5, BT-20, and BT-50 are easy to build and cover most of what you really need for launching entries in Pink Book events. Frankly, I think outlawing pistons would do more for stimulating NRC competition than adding FAI events ever could.

I appreciate your frustration with the change of the SD event to the FAI version. Moreover, I agree that putting the FAI events in the NRC can impede participation because there is a very limited stock of 40mm material available off the shelf.
All that being said, however, I would be happy to run a construction clinic at the October Amesbury launch to show you how to construct an FAI SD bird with the CMASS 40mm mandrel and vellum.