Beyond 2004

This is the thread to aid in development of new ideas and classes. Post working rules and gather feedback!

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Hat Trick
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Post by Hat Trick »

The point is the constant one upmanship and next level of performance is a huge drain on time energy and dollars. The idea of the event would seem to be who is the best pilot and most skilled flyer. Sure the latest and greatest designs and engines and gismos are readily available but not everyone has the time and dollars to scrap a fleet and build and - or requip them.

Making the event easy to get into and be competative in is a very good thing!

Prop , RPM , Wing area limits , and you've got it all!
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Post by thojo »

Hat,

I know you've been preaching a spec class, and with your experience in flying and putting out kits, what would be your recommendation on specs for that spec class.

For instance:
1) what airfoil, thickness, chord, span, etc?
2) what fuse type, battle floyd ish, flat bat, etc?
3) Would you mandate a specific fuse length?
4) would you put a minumim and or maximum weight restriction, and what would they be?
5) what engine would be specified?


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Post by Hat Trick »

I think all you need is:
1. A prop and RPM limitation that is easy to get to with a common stock setup. The present limited B proposals should be fine here.
I would use MA 10x4 if I had my choice. APC props just break to much. You could probably allow both APC 10x3 and MA 10x4 and not have any problem.

2. A max wing area so all designs can be competative at the minimum weight requirement and have enough armor to be as survivable as possible. 64" span and 18" max of root and tip chords added together. I would prefer the chord max to be smaller but it will make some designs illegal. The flip side is that all the planes with smaller wings will need to be changed to get to the max wing area to be the most competative.

3# may be a bit low. With a wing that size and useing the common fuse types they will probably be over 3#. Designs with fuselages may have to give up armor to save weight to be competative with designs that don't have to use up weight in a fuselage. Time will tell. However with that large a wing the extra weight may not be as much of a factor as it won't increase wing loading very much. The 2548 class uses 3.5# and has a lot less wing area and fly well. The same minimum in both classes would not be a bad idea. It's also nice to have some weight cushion to account for repairs and still be at the minimum by removing ballast.

A wing thickness rule may not be a bad idea although I'm not sure it would be a major issue.

There is no need to have a lot of hard to police and regulate rules on airfoils, fuse type or measurements, engines etc. The key factor to max performance is wing loading and speed. There will be a little evolution but there is not to much that can be done with these basic limitations.

I'm against a completely spec class as it would be impossible to police it well and it would put off a lot of pilots and manufactures.
If these basic rules are met it should be able to compete and the performance will be very similar.

In my opinion we want perfomance to be close and let a large number of designs and construction methods be competative.

Let pilot skills be the determining factor and stop the never ending cycle of increased performance and the need to redesign and buy new engines, planes, etc every year. The weight minimum and wing area maximum should also let pilots concentrate on having a tough plane rather than the lightest plane. It would be great to be able to use standard size servo's and batteries etc and still be able to armor up you plane and meet the minimum weight.
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Post by Which_way_is_up »

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Hat Trick</i>
<br />. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Let pilot skills be the determining factor and stop the never ending cycle of increased performance and the need to redesign and buy new engines, planes, etc every year. The weight minimum and wing area maximum should also let pilots concentrate on having a tough plane rather than the lightest plane. It would be great to be able to use standard size servo's and batteries etc and still be able to armor up you plane and meet the minimum weight.



<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Mike I read with interest your ideas and find myself agreeing with most of what you say until you close out your discussion with the "justification" paragraph. Little has changed in two years in Open B and 2610. The same speed and carnage issues existed in 2002, 2003 and 2004. So this arms race that you keep referring to has to be all about your vision of SSC and where it went wrong in your mind. Because the need for new engines, planes, increased performance, etc. has nothing to do with Open B and 2610. Other then the fact that you need five times as many planes per season to fly Open B versus SSC. Those two classes (Open B,2610) have plateaued for some time. Now SSC is a different story. In a year and a half it has gone from a sky full of wallowing pigs to great bunch of flying planes.

What's my point, don't bash SSC as a defense to promote "slow B/Limited B/Spec B" or whatever you want to call it. I'm much more inclined to listen to and probably agree with most of what you say if you let your position stand on it own merit.

<hr noshade size="1">

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Post by MLaBoyteaux »

Ok, I'm listening. Several of us have been discussing ways to broaden the appeal to more pilots. With the idea for limited B put forth by Travis and Jimbo, and the suggestions from the Tall Wise One, do you think we could come up with a way to let pilots with SSC planes compete in the same class? (a one class fits all approach) Or would the speed difference put them at too much of a disadvantage against the .25 powered planes?

I haven't tried flying my planes with a limited B setup yet, so I don't know how fast they'll be (maybe this weekend). I'm not trying to hijack the ideas, just asking the question as if we were sitting around discussing it over a beer[:D]



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Post by Jimbo »

Don't worry Roy, you'll get it right one day. It's called Limited-B[:o)] Come on, try to keep up with the rest of us.
Mark I would think you would have a CG problem going from a .15 to a .25 and I know a .15 can't swing a 10x3.

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Post by Ed Kettler »

I'm looking at approaches to gather in some more of the competitive types who are not quite ready for NPS contests. I generally call this 'fun combat' where you don't worry about the intricacies of NPS scoring and just focus on the fun aspects of cuts, bragging rights and smack talk. The military calls this 'low intensity conflict' (LIC).

My approach to 2548 has been to build the planes and hand a fully fueled airplane and transmitter to a pilot and say "have fun!". I'm thinking now of how to take some of the stuff we observed at Sherman about crowd reaction to the 2548 birds and how to roll that into some fun fly events and LIC to get combat in front of a bigger crowd. Team combat may be one of those ideas that works and grabs some hearts and minds. Limiting the number of planes up at one time will reduce collision anxiety for the new folks, so maybe it will be 2 v 2 for a while.

For combat to survive, you have to continually recruit. For combat to survive, you have to retain your current pilots. People join and stay engaged when they are having fun.

Ed

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Post by thojo »

We deal with issues at work all the time and it always boils down to whether we want to expend a lot of effort in trying to kluge together a stop gap resolution which leaves you with a lot of compromises, or rework a new solution that resolves the issues once and for all.

Trying to fix 2610 seems to fall into this scenario, and a clean slate solution is being developed called 2548. The benefit being no compromises trying to cater to all the factions that exist in 2610.

My gut says that Limited-B is more of a stop gap compromise than a solution to the issues we are currently dealing with in the RCCA. I am not trying to take away what Travis and Jimbo are trying to do, they saw a need and are trying to take action to resolve the issues and are not just sitting around on the behind doing nothing...

My perception is that there are 2 types of people in the RCCA and that fly combat in general, "builders/innovators" and "flyers".

Builder/Innovators push the envelope, look for every advantage in their airframes and consistently look for better ways to build a better mousetrap. These are the true hardcore combat flyers.

Flyers like flying combat, but don’t like spending a lot of time in the shop “figuring outâ€
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Post by Jimbo »

Travis and I work on all kinds of ideas and try everything the combat world has thrown at us such as Gremlin combat, OpenC, OpenB,SSC,Limited-B and our 48"Spec Class. The reason we wanted to try Limited-B is because it is almost impossible to sell change in the RCCA.
thojo Limited-B is not a compromise or a solution, it's an alternative.

Limited-B
Try it,you'll like it !
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Post by Lou Melancon »

The title of this thread is "Beyond 2004". I started it to try to generate ideas to grow combat. With very few exceptions this thread, like dozens before it, has degenerated into tired old arguments about who wants to fly what. It reads more like "lets rehash all the arguments we had before 2004..."

We seem to have inbred the gene pool of ideas to the point where we are no longer creative. By creative I don't mean changing rules in existing classes, throwing existing ones out for the event du jour, nor trying your best to say why one class isn't working so you can tout your favored one.

I am also personally tired of folks talking a concept to death, but not doing any thing about it. Maybe its human nature to want everyone to see the wisdom of your perspective then change what they are doing, toss out what they have invested in, and be bullied on the forums into either not replying or getting fed up and leaving.

Classes, displacement, airframe specs are not the problems in drawing in new folks. They have to buy something just to get started and they will buy whatever it takes to get in and try it.

There is one self proclaimed Newbie posting on this forum, I believe for the first time, and instead of listening to him and welcoming him, we have ignored his comments.

Welcome Nvillerod! Glad you are posting and I appreciate your insights, perspectives and comments.

I may not have it all right, but I think you said:

1. Sum up what RCCA stands for and tell folks about it.
2. Keep it simple - RCCA has too many classes and is confusing
3. SSC is the best way for a beginner to start
4. Scoring is hard to understand
5. There are personal agendas masquerading as wisdom.

The membership may not agree with you but you make good points.

I cannot figure out why so few of you are posting anything positive on SSC. Actually there aren't that many posting and many of those who are have made no secret that they wanted to fly .25s instead of .15s.

So here we have the fastest growing class, attracting many new members, the only one that hasn't made it to full event status yet and we are throwing it under the bus because it doesn't fit everyone's personal agenda.

No one has yet posted about electrics in this forum. That may well be our future. There are nice scale ships available from Hobby Lobby for electric at very low prices, yet we cannot seem to see the world changing around us, nor embrace the enormous number of folks participating in electric flight. Look at how many reviews have been done of electric WWII fighters in the magazines in the last year, and we have diligently ignored what is right under our noses so we could argue about SSC vs Open B.

Here is a challenge: what will make combat grow? Notice I didn't say what would bring those who have left back. I also didn't say what would get folks to fly in a couple of local contests at their clubs. I am asking what would cause combat, membership in the RCCA, and an identifiable increase in money spent on combat products to happen?

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Post by boiler »

Lou, I don't know the answer to you question and I doubt any of the other pilot do unless the have divine guidance. I know that we had an accident in Iowa last saturday that had nothing to do with flying combat but just safty around a spinning prop. I think the future of combat may be slower, lighter planes that anyone can fly. It may be an electric newbie class. Sheepy has worked tirelesly to get an electric SSC going and didn't do too bad in Iowa. If he could fly, it would have been fantastic. (Sorry for that Sheepy) I just had to reply to your pre contest smack somehow. I have a local club of about 70 members and am the only one flying combat according to the RCCA. We have several new members as well as old that are flying full contact type Zaggi combat. I have engaged in this several times with them just to have someone to fly combat with at the local level. No streamers, no points, just another way to fly combat. I wish I could get a group of slimers together to put on a demo. It might get some of the older members that fly slimers to try it. I doubt if any of the only electric crowd would move. They don't understand gas engines or have had trouble with them and don't want the hassle. I don't have and answer Lou, but those are what I see locally. Personally, I love the RCCA combat and want to fly it all. Building time is the limiting factor in that formula but I will get much more builing time soon. I'm finally ready to list my old house.

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Post by Hat Trick »

Roy,

I didn't mention SSC in my post or make any referance to SSC. I reread my post and can't see any way it can be interpreted as SSC bashing.
We learned a lot of lessons in SSC. This info can be readily applied to Limited B as the goal of both classes is similar.

If you haven't tried limted B you should. I think it has great potential.

I've been in it a lot longer than you and have been through a whole lot more evolution cycles. To me the pattern is pretty clear. The top dogs are an inovative bunch and always find a way to increase performance and everyone else has to ante up or settle for not being competative or get out. This is what needs to stop to have a class of combat that can be more universal and used across the country for new flyers as well as the old hands.

If you want SSC bashing here it is. The planes have to low a thrust to weight ratio. Launches are difficult under adverse comditions. This also contributes to planes falling out of the sky after they midair even though they are not damaged. It's difficult for most pilots to get up to and stay near the RPM limit without a lot of effort. It's difficult to be near the weight minimum and have decent armor for a lot of designs. The class has evolved to the point where only a few designs are competative. Great if it's your design. Bad if it is not.
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Post by slam »

lou,

i have to agree with you, electrics may well be the future of combat. i didn't mention it because i don't know how to include it.

sheepy has done an outstanding job with his electric but after following his post, watching drewjets attempts, and flying alot of electric i am convinced that to give electrics a chance they cannot fit in the existing classes.

OH NO....another class???????????

zagi flyers have been enjoying combat for years, we in florida have been enjoying ifo combat for over a year. neither use streamers. both are very durable and have minimal repair.

the wwII planes you are referring to are not in any way suitable for any kind of combat. in fact the performance (stock) is mediocre at best, and durability is non-existent. that is not to say something isn't on the horizon, but what i have seen is not suitable for what we would put it through.

i very much agree that rcca has to move into the electric realm but have dim hopes of making that move easily.

slam
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Post by Lou Melancon »

Mike,
I've taken your SSC critical statements over to the SSC Forums so we can discuss them here.

This discussion of modifying one class in favor over another impacts existing combat fliers. It is a result of our limited vision of thinking about what we do. It is inbred thinking. It does nothing to grow the sport or attract new fliers.

I think new fliers come to combat because because they are looking for the excitement. The excitement is getting cuts. The level of excitement is not related to displacement or airframes.

We need to get out of the box and discuss how to get the appeal of combat in front of more people.

Lou Melancon
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Post by nvillerod »

Lou:

You have summed up my perceptions very well. Everyone please remember...perception is reality to those that don't know any better. If a "newby's" perception is that combat is complicated, expensive and only for expert pilots, we will be hard pressed to get him/her to join us. The above may not be necessarly true, but that's the opinion out there of many would be joiners.

We need a triple A (farm team) league, a la professional baseball. Maybe that's SSC, maybe something else. Simple, relatively inexpensive, easy to build and repair, flying speeds that old guys like me can follow. Flyers may start out here, progress to the "big league" or simply be happy staying with the farm team.

No matter, we have increased our ranks, thus giving us all an opportunity to fly more rounds, with different pilots.
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