Flight Judging

[rc-pilot]

With reference to comments made in "First PSS of the Year" about flight judging for "heavy PSS", perhaps we can have a separate discussion on this topic, which is of some importance. I will throw in my two-penn'orth by saying that there are several problems associated with flight judging, but prefacing an expansion on this statement by a reminder that our hobby is about flying scale(ish) models, not about building museum pieces.

As I see it, some of the problems are:

1. Getting any consistency into flight judging is difficult. Competitiors have the right to know what the judging criteria are, so they can perform accordingly if they wish to be in with a chance of a prize.
2. However, if flight judging criteria are set out too stringently, then we may as well go back to formal rules, and this would appear to be a retrograde step as far as most participants are concered.
3. We can only judge the pilot, not the model. The same model flown by different pilots will be displayed in as many different ways as there are pilots, so what are we looking for? The best model or the best pilot?
4. Following full size flight patterns is rarely much fun, especially if the model is of a relatively sedate original (e.g. B52, Lancaster), and some pilots (me included) go out for enjoyment, and fly for our own challenge and satisfaction. This does not necessarily mean that the capabilities of the model are not adequately demonstrated.
5. If we wish to judge the model, than surely we should give better marks to one which demonstrates that it is capable of more than another comparable one. How much better is a model of a B52 that can be looped and rolled than one which can't? I would say that the more agile one demonstrates better building or design - or both, and should therefore gain higher marks, but if these models are constrained to leisurely low-g behaviour as per full size, this important difference will never be seen.
6. The flight aspects of a competition should always account for the bulk of the scores. Unfortunately, this makes it even more important that flight judging is done even-handedly and above all, accurately; an extremely difficult target for which to aim.

I will finish by saying that I am not against flight judging, nor against static judging either, provided both are done fairly and rationally.

OK, there's the cat, where are the pigeons?

[AndyB]

Well ... :-) (flap, flap...)

The question that goes to the heart of this issue is, I think "What are we judging, the best model or the best pilot?".

Why does it have to be either/or? I don't see why we can't judge both, and that's exactly what happens in other scale disciplines - the static scores are for the model, the flying scores are for the pilot. Granted, there may be some characteristics of the model that will make it more difficult to do certain things - a U2 may well be difficult to roll, for example, or an Su-27 may be disinclined to loop.

There are advantages to marking both the model and pilot; it may enable someone who is good at model building but not very able or confident at flying to enter with a reasonable chance of success. Conversely, it may also enable someone who is very good at flying but doesn't have the time to spend on building to enter with a decent prospect of getting somewhere near the top of the listings.

I agree with the comments made about full-size flight patterns, although I've come round to this view after an extensive period of de-programming (I used to be in favour of prescribed manoevers, but I'm OK now apart from the occasional relapse).

My personal opinion is that PSS models should be flown in such a way that they remind (carefully chosen word!) an observer of the real thing - the more realistic they look in flight, the higher the flight score. Generally speaking, we can't actually convince people that our models are the real thing but we can make them look very convincing by flying smoothly and not making jerky pitch and roll changes except when manoevering hard - I think most people have seen a Hawk displayed, it has quite a rapid roll rate with a very well-defined stop to the manoever, and a very smooth but reasonably rapid pitch response. Flying a model in this way will go a long way towards persuading people that they're looking at a realistic replica rather than a model aeroplane that happens to look like a Hawk. The actual manoevres performed are, I suggest, more-or-less immateriel - unless you happen to like just tooling up an down the slope all day - because if the pilot has managed to pull off a manoevre that is executed in a realistic manner, an impartial oberver will be more inclined to say "My word, I didn't think a Lancaster could do that" (or words to that effect) than "That's not a very scale manoevre".

Finally, I'd be interested in seeing a justification for the assertion that "The flight aspects of the competition should always account for the bulk of the scores". This might be appropriate in certain circumstances, but its not necessarily the case that those circumstances extend to normal ("heavy") PSS events.

[simonhar]

Evening Gentleman...

I'm from the school that it should try to fly like the real thing, do B52's 'loop'! Normally...

From a comp organisers side of thing, it needs to be REALLY SIMPLE, not 4sides of A4 to explain the rules, OK some of you may have looked at the rules first most of them don't and aint that bothered either...They don't want a 30min briefing to explain whats going to happen, they want to fly.

What should be done is the CD explains BRIEFLY that you flying styles will be monitored during the day. A scale like manor gets the higher marks, Hot Dogging with a Tiger Moth gets mrked down. Its gota look like the real thing. The dimensions of the model are a factor to acheive a 'K' factor Then the Finish and Character and Outline of the model complete.

Problem here I think the Outline + Markings are worth a max of 75marks, Character 25 marks max. You may have a few museum pieces picking up good marks. So for me flying style is THE most important part.

You should as andy has mentioned to me give 100 marks for flying MAX

If it looks pretty and don't fly - 0marks
If it flies and lands at the bottom and not flown again - 25marks
Flies and performs a circuit and maintains this pattern - 50marks
No matter how many flight performed
Anything after this is down to piloting skill and CD discretion - 100Max.

All of which when you have 3-4 models flying can be interesting.
Don't introduce a ONE at ONCE flight ...as one flight will get the right conditions the other won't and it TAKES TO MUCH TIME!

The main thing is to not put fliers off entering and to let people fly the max.

[AndyB]

I suggest that the "fly like the real thing" position is not quite as black-and-white as all that. :-)

It *is* possible to "hot dog" with a tiger moth, its just that its quite sedate hot dogging - the tiger club's entire display used to be based on it, as I recall. :-) There's the story of the pilot of a Lear jet who rolled illegally it for a bet, he would have got away with it too but for the fact that he was caught on TV whilst they were filming an ocean-going Yacht race. Also, the prototype Boeing 707 was rolled (I have a picture!) and at one of the Farnborough airshows, so was the Vulcan. I believe the pilot was given a severe dressing-down by the flying committee for that one. I don't actually know whether a Lancaster could be looped, but I suspect it could. A Stirling could certainly do a stall turn.

On top of that, if people get marked down for doing a loop or a roll with a four-engined "heavy" then they won't want to build one because they won't get a good flight score, and that would be a shame.

Basically, I think its going to be a bit arbitrary to mark a model down for performing an unlikely manoevre, *unless* its done in a non-scale manner. If someone rolls a Lancaster in less than about 5 seconds, I think its too quick and should be marked down. On the other hand, if they take 7 or 8 seconds, it'll look convincing so why shouldn't they get the credit?

I'm with you about not introducing a "one at once" style of competition though...

The concept of a sliding scale of flight marking is interesting, at least people will know where they stand. One problem with it is that quality of flight is only being marked out of 50, not 100 (all those that fly get at least 50 points).

I had another idea today whilst staring into space on the 18.21 from Paddington, don't know how this would work, see what you think;

Given that the difficulty with loads of models in the air is keeping it simple, perhaps the Contest Director could take several short samples of people's flying during the day. Basically, to score a model, he watches it for a short while (maybe 20-30 seconds) until he forms an opinion of how well its being flown on a scale of 1 to 10, then records that on a score sheet. Doing this a few times (2 or 3) for each model will give an average score that should even out any variation, and will automatically penalise models that don't fly very well, and shouldn't take up very much time (about 30 minutes for 10 models). Actually, having written this down it doesn't sound that good anymore... :-)

[rc-pilot]

Oh good! People are interested!

Re "are we judging best model or best pilot?". It doesn't have to be either, it can be both, but if we judge a pilot who isn't the builder, how can we combine flight and static scores and give the points to only one of them? Don't we have to have separate awards for flying and static? Should we give any static points to a model which doesn't fly if there are separate awards? It all gets very complicated, and I would love there to be some easy answers.

- Digression : how can we give static points to an owner who isn't the builder? End of digression -

Re "Why should flight points count for the bulk of the scores?". Because we make models to fly, not solely to look at. It can be as accurate, well-finished and detailed as you like, but if it don't fly, it ain't a PSS model (the latter "S" stands for "SOARING", not "sitting on the ground"). It might one day fly and become a PSS model, but until then it's unproven. I could spend weeks finishing and detailing a model which I know would be then too heavy to fly (or perhaps wasn't even designed to), and it would be immoral to give it an award when others at the same venue had proved that they could do what was expected and what our title implies; i.e. fly.

Re "It should be really simple". Can't argue with that, but sometimes simplicity leaves loopholes, and then the CD may fall into disrepute because people often don't like to query his decisions (seems like sour grapes) and can go away disgruntled.
If the rules are explained as simply as "fly it like the real thing" that's perfectly OK - so long as the judge actually knows how the real thing flies, and manages to see the best flight put up by every pilot. AndyB's comments about "reminding of the real thing" strikes a chord, and in some respects echoes the original PSS concept and one which still applies to the static aspects of the models - i.e. to capture the essence of the full size - not necessarily to replicate it precisely. His idea on sampling has some merit too, provided the judge is allowed to use sharp instruments like pencils, and can manage a sheet of paper in a 20mph wind (if only!). As an aside, I do recall seeing a (large model) DC3 being rolled repeatedly, to the enjoyment of pilot and onlookers. . In essence, it doesn't matter what the rules are (within reason) as long as everyone who cares understands them.

Re "several models flying together". By all means. I've experienced the other situation, one at a time for a fixed flight time, and had a 200 mile round trip for four five-minute flights . Not any more, thank you. Simonhar says "The main thing is to not put fliers off entering and to let people fly the max." and that's exactly right.

I've probably missed responding to some bits, but it's well past my bedtime. Bong Swah.

[AndyB]

> how can we give static points to an owner who isn't the builder?

Ah. Now you've done it. I was wondering how long it was going to take someone to find their can-opener... :-). Personally, I don't feel comfortable with being awarded a static mark for something that I haven't built, but I think other people may hold a different view. Maybe a penalty on the static marks is in order if the model wasn't built by the flyer?

I suggest that the issue about giving static points to a non-flying "hanger queen" can be easily dealt with by saying that if it doesn't make at least one flight, it doesn't get any points at all, static or otherwise. The definition of "a flight" in this instance should probably be something quite wide, something like "sucessfully launched and flown under control for some time period (say 20 seconds) to be determined by the Contest Director". If this solution is adopted, it also deals (to some extent) with the argument about flight scores, I think...?

I didn't know about the "DC-3 incident" - I'd have liked to have seen that... :-)

[rc-pilot]

AndyB said "if it doesn't make at least one flight, it doesn't get any points at all, static or otherwise" and I think that's perfectly reasonable. It comes unstuck on a day when nobody can fly, though, and the only awards are made on the basis of static judging.
In that situation, there is no way of knowing whether any of the models are capable of flight, whatever the definition of "flight" might be (except of course for those which have been seen to fly on previous occasions).

Re: how can we give static points to an owner who isn't the builder? --snip-- Maybe a penalty on the static marks is in order if the model wasn't built by the flyer?

I fear we are getting here into too much complexity and prescriptiveness. I merely threw in the digression because it seemed to illustrate just how loose our "rules" are. If you take an objective view of the way we conduct our events, you can see how it is quite possible for the awards to go completely the wrong way, as per:
Bob builds an excellent model, and later passes it on to Jim, who brings it to a meeting where its origins are not known. It gets the most static marks. Jim doesn't fly it, though, and lets his mate Al do that. Al demonstrates it to the ultimate satisfaction of the judge(s) and it gets the best flying score. Jim walks away with the award for best model and has had absolutely no part in it. That's right and proper?
Don't get me wrong, I am not proposing that anything should be done about it, but that this can happen (and regarding static marking at least, has happened) does seem rather silly, to put it mildly. I know it's said "well, the awards usually go to the right model/person" but how can anyone know that? It's completely emotive and in the absence of any quantifiable means of marking static and flight, not in any way a rational statement.

Re "the DC3 incident" I will say only that I didn't find it in any way objectionable; in fact it proved that the model was well built and aerodynamically sound, and therefore meritorious. Beyond that, I will leave it to its pilot to make any further comment.

[rc-pilot]

I couldn't remember how much lead there was up front, only that it weighed more than the rest of the model. It went well, though. However, mustn't digress again in this thread,so...

Re "It is a comp of BOTH flying skill and craftmanship that is PSS. Its just a case of separating the wheat from the chaff".
That's a good way of putting it. It's that process of separation that is under discussion.

I wonder if anyone else has any ideas on the subject, it seems strangely quiet except for we three.

[AndyB]

Is it just me or is Simon's post (#7) empty...?

Yes it is (just a new moderator practising)

[jmyve]

Well...let's say what we are doing in France !

Judging is like that : (3 judges at last)

Static :
A pilot present a model with optionaly a book that show that this PSS exist in real and to show few snapshot of it, better in the the good markings... The PSS is judge on the global respect of shape, marks, and bonus are give for detail and good looking.

Flight :

The same pilot fly on the slope. The judge should be people experienced on aviation, i.e. going to real airshow like Farnborough and Duxford for exemple. the flight aspect judged are : Global realism, respect of the real style of flight, and presentation (i.e. do a show, not only fly across the slope).

For exemple, somebody who present a aerobatic model like zlin must do some cool aerobatic, a Extra300 should do unlimited aérobatics. Somebody who present a liner model like my Caravelle or an Airbus should do very cool flight, with not only one hard turn, but must present good flyby, maybe gently slide flyby... Etc... Landing have to be quiet...

Judge must be aware that the flight is "alike" the real can do, or may do. But not in normal opération, better in meeting airshow.

Yes, it's more simple with big sized PSS... But if someone spend a long time to big a large airplane, with all risk it is to fly it on little slope (I'm thinking about the SimonHat Ant225 Mryia...), why he can't have bonus with that if the model fly well ?

That's what we do on the Macon PSS event each year since 12 years ! The next Mâcon Event will be between the 29 of may and the 1 of june, with special PSS day on the saturday 31. Mâcon is on Burgundy, 50 km north of Lyon, 400 km south of Paris.

I hope to see you there !

Well, for the DC3 rool, i was there when it occurs... It's pilot really like aerobatic, and have a great respect for this DC3, it's the only time i've seen him do that... But it's fun ! ;D This should not occur during judged flights...

See you soon !

Jean-Michel