A question (Poll) on the Beginner Pattern

I have proposed for a long time (although never "officially") that the Beginner pattern should be the same as the modern pattern with the exception of no vertical eight, hourglass, overhead eight, or clover. That way a person can enter beginner without going over 45 degrees (except for the wingover) and all maneuvers would be performed just the same as in the other classes. Then when he learns the vertical stuff, he can move on up the ladder. My personal feeling is the present pattern, because it is different, stiffles movement. Some people stay beginner forever, and sometimes simply because they have never learned the rest of the pattern or how to do the maneuvers in the right way.

Others, such as Brett suggested in another thread, would like to see the beginner class fly the regular pattern from the start. This would seem to be a valid argument, also, as it would enable those who enter competition even at the bottom level to begin with the pattern that everyone else is flying and work immediately in developing proper form and style.

Or, maybe some of you want to champion the present beginner pattern in its present form.

Or, maybe you even have another idea. So, come on in, state your ideas on the Beginner pattern, how you think it should be flown (same as now, different, additions, subtractions, whatever). Only lets not just make this a poll. State your views on the Beginner pattern and tell us why you favor what you propose. I don't know what will come out of this, but let's see.

Good question, Leonard! "Back when I flew stunt"...I never entered a contest. Then I started coming out to the PA contests and other CL contests, helping run the contests. The first time I entered a contest was at Nils' C.O.L.D. contest last July, and the first time I flew since sometime in the early '90's or late '80's. I'd been around the stunt circle for the last couple years but had NEVER seen a beginner pattern, and here I had to do it, with two test hops under my handle. What we (Skyraiders) always did was use the standard pattern, but allow the Beginners to say ahead of time that they will not do whatever maneuvers they are not comfy with, and then the judges don't watch for those. I think if all the specified maneuvers are done, the pattern points are awarded. I agree, it is silly to learn one pattern and then a different one. Similarly, I think it is the WRONG thing to do (for a beginner) to try to fly OTS so they can fly more events. A good way to get confused and confusion is probably a bigger cause of broken balsa than any other factor. A better approach would be to enter Beginner/Intermediate and Classic, which can easily be done with dozens of designs. Other than that, I LIKE OTS models very much, and they are ideal sport models, whether or not we choose to fly them in competitions. Steve

Mike Clark

You have been preaching forever to practice high! Why not COMPETE high, same pattern, but give less reward to low pullouts and sharp radii? Capture all the rest of the current pattern, and make it, say, 12 feet? Reduce the standard on on the hourglass, and all squares to a rounder pattern. Reduces the design strain, reduces crashes, and (horrors!) penalize for flying or pulling out too low. I don't think any beginner has any problem DOING the pattern, just doing it well and low.

Nah, I wouldn't do the penalty bit for sharper and lower, but you get the idea.

Beginner pattern: All maneuvers in order with the exception of the vertical eight, hourglass, overhead eight and clover as stated above.

Intermediate, Advanced, and "Expert" pattern: All maneuvers in the modern pattern in order.

Now, heights: Beginner AND Intermediate: Fly the bottom anywhere from 5 to 15 feet at the flyer's discretion. At take-off, the flyer shall establish level flight at the level of his choosing and fly two complete laps at that height to be judged as normal. For the rest of the pattern the bottoms shall conform to this height and everything judged accordingly. Points would be taken off for flying higher and lower than the height that the flyer, himself, has established just as we do with the 4 to 6 foot prescribed height in the pattern now. This would allow those who are uncomfortable at lower heights to fly at a reasonable height that would not risk the plane while they are still learning the shapes. They could bring them down gradually, and when they get comfortable at the "normal" pattern height, they can move on.

Advanced and Expert: 4 to 6 foot bottoms specified as in the rules at present.

So, comments anyone? The line forms again at the right (or bottom)

{snip a bit}
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>Advanced and Expert: 4 to
>6 foot bottoms specified as
>in the rules at present.
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>So, comments anyone? The line
>forms again at the right
>(or bottom)

I think that you really need to have a standard for people to go by. One of my complaints with Beginner is having 2 different systems. This would add another.

I tend to agree that there is too much emphasis on low bottoms, particularly at local contests (which frequently turn into limbo contests - one time at the Northwest Regionals, between Ted, David, Paul, and myself, we managed to get the average bottom height down to about 18" as the day wore on. Just giving them what they wanted...). But trying to mandate it, and then have different standards for the pilots, not to mention the judges, for different classes really makes it complicated. High bottoms also lead to high tops, and the one thing we don't need is more people learning to fly maneuver tops at 60+ degrees.

I would agree that one shouldn't go to OTS from beginner unless that's where you want to be. Trying to remember which kind of wingover you are doing on the way down is not a good thing. I very, very, seldom fly reverse wingovers with my OTS airplanes or regular wingovers with my AMA airplanes.

I would think that Nats flyers would have to fly whatever pattern was being used at the local contests so we don't confuse people with different rules wherever you go. But, that's an opinion.

P.S. Guys,
Don't forget that this is an entry level for competition. Not only are the maneuvers important, but the whole routine. It gets us ready to compete at a higher level. As a Beginner it is understood that we will make mistakes and need encouragement guidance at a contest. Everybody is very willing to help the Beginner along to make it a positive experience. This can be more of an important step than what we actually fly at the contest.
Crist

I think we lost something when we started using the PAMPA beginner's pattern. I came around long before the beginner pattern (which started in the mid-80's around the midwest, and became the official rules in maybe 90 or so.

I think the idea was to come up with a pattern that most beginners could complete. In fact, most beginners at the time were making it through the regular pattern (as they still to out here in WAM contests). Maybe it wasn't always pretty, but they were all there. The scores were low, but comparable to the other classes, particularly when the same judges were doing multiple classes.

The beginner pattern changed drastically the distribution through the classes. The new criteria was no longer a series of "300 point" regular patterns, but instead, if you could get through all the tricks, you moved to indermediate. What almost immediately happened was that everybody who was a beginner was now an Intermediate. This led to a number of people who were legitimate intermediate pilots being peer-pressured up to Advanced, and on up. You can see where this is going. The net effect was that the classes compressed. Now we have a bunch of guys that would have been Advanced pilots are now trying to compete against FAI team members.

The down side of the old way (beginners flying the whole pattern) was that it rewarded those who had the guts/ego to try everything, however poorly, over those who flew fewer maneuvers well. When the average score is in the 300 range, 25 pattern points was almost always decisive. It also led to people attempting maneuvers at contests that they weren't really ready to do in front of people.

This last was not as bad as it sounds - you have to try it sometime. It tended to motivate people to learn all the tricks.

To me, I still think we would be better off having the all 4 classes back the way they were. Most of the complaining about Experts flying Advanced at the NATS would not have occurred without the peer-pressure driving people to Advanced too soon. I think the guys winning Advanced at the NATS *are* legitimate Advanced fliers. The fact that they fly Expert at home is more a matter of the peer-pressure effects of skill class compression as it is sandbagging. The ill-conceived "Master's Class" is a response to this effect - just a way get back the 4 divisions we used to have.

I also think that it's a good thing to give a little motivation to the beginner to learn the pattern, and to trim the airplane to make it through all the maneuvers. It's no harm to not make it occasionally.

What I would have done myself, and I suggested at the time, was to add a class at the bottom, like "trainer class" or something less dorky, and make that some sort of reduced pattern. Or to like WAM used to do, and give 15 pattern points if you did a preflight chosen subset of the whole pattern, and 25 if you made the whole thing. It's a good compromise solution.

I think we still need a beginners class and a revised system would give them the motivation to learn and advance without penalty.

"Z"

I think we all agree there needs to be a beginner class, I think the question is more what should it be.

While I originally brought up the topic, I'm not convinced that there is any real problem with the current system. Just maybe less-than-ideal.

I worked hard to learn the maneuvers that are required for Beginners class, and trying to learn the pair of Square Inside Loops took me several months. At age 64, I fulfilled a life time dream to enter a stunt contest.

I think that flyers that can do the entire pattern have forgotten just how difficult it can be for some to learn square eights, triangles, and the hourglass. If I had had to learn all of these considerable more difficult maneuvers, it would probably be a couple of more years before I could do it, and perhaps it would never happen. (!) It's a long, uphill, learning curve. This is not the way to encourage beginners to enter contests.

In regards to the overhead eight, I don't consider that such a difficult maneuver to do. It's difficult to do and score high, but it's just and inside loop and and outside loop flown in an *awkward position*, but as far away from the ground as you can possible get. I personally like that. I never had an "close encounter" with Mother Earth while trying a overhead eight. Can't say the same for those pesky square loops...especially that fourth corner.

Basically, my opinion is that if beginners have to learn the whole pattern before they can enter contests, you will probably have fewer people competing for the first time.

By having an abbreviated Beginners pattern, it provided a reasonal, and obtainable, short term goal, and by achieving that goal, I am encouraged to start tackling my long term goal of learning the full PA pattern.

My suggestion would be to continue use the Beginners Pattern as it stands for now, but discuss ways that it might be improved. In my judgement, all of the round manuevers could be used, including the clover, but the square eights, triangles, and hourglass and just too difficult to learn without years of practice, and by this time, you will have lost a lot of potential stunt pilots.

JMHO

Cheers,

"Just been there...done that" Warren

John

This thread shows the same population spread we have seen in other threads. Whether finishing, engine setup, rules, or whatever, we see the same groups.

For the most part the Young (under 40, maybe under 50) Up-And-Comers are true beginners with no competition experience. They need to get their feet wet as painlessly as possible, lest they become golfers.

Other "beginners" are "old retreads" like me coming back to the sport after a 35 year vacation. I never flew competitive stunt, but flew nothing but contests for many years. It is a different perspective.

After reading all the comments, I am firmly convinced the rules should favor the TRUE BEGINNERS, REGARDLESS OF AGE. Us old retreads will stick it out 'til we die of inhaling our secret stache of nitrobenzene.

Making the true beginners comfortable with competition, and willing to keep trying to improve, is the REAL rules goal. I missed the point before. The beginner rules are for beginners, and serve only one master.

I loved the Warren note! He made himself sound like a true beginner at age 64.

Most of us retreads really don't care all that much about what the rules are. Or who wins (not really true, but I am making a no so subtle point).

After Terry Bradshaw won his last Super Bowl, an announcer asked him how he managed to play so well. He answered, "Well, everytime I picked a newspaper I read how stupid I was and how over-the-hill I was; my wife was divorcing me; I was getting bald. I decided the heck with everybody. I decided to go out and have some more FUN playing football."

Most of us retreads would probably agree with Terry. The heck with everybody. We are going to go out and have some more fun flying our toy airplanes! And let's support the kids (the under 50s).

I am working on my schedule adn some elements like the hourglass and the vertical eights hold a lot of terror (yet to be realised as I have not yet attempted them yet)

However a compassionate stance taken by the organisers of the UK nats allow for beginners to elect to miss out some of the harder manouevres for the Classic event with the aim of attracting returnees back to the fold and get peripheral flyers into the competition circle.

A chap called Tom Jolley also runs a beginners competition with a very basic schedule and interest is slowly growing but probably not as fast as he would like.

I am a 42 year old returnee and have had a lot of fun over the past few years with fooling around and falling over, name any mistake and mishap and I have probably done it/experienced it.

I am now preparing to build some bigger stunters and have nearly completed a Nobler and will probably have the Grondal variant built along with a Mercury Crusader and Don Still Stuka not to mention a couple of 0.09 diesel powered vintage team racers (our weather has been really foul so the building programme is moving ahead at an accelerated pace).

When looking at the schedules offered one has to look at what they offer the beginner: enjoyment or humiliation

The flexibility offered to folk like me in the UK who would ordinarily fly for fun and not dream of entering a competition has made me 'get off my butt' and prepare to join the fray as I have nothing to lose apart from my nerve on the day of the competition.

Admittedly, the UK has a much smaller population of C/L fliers and our C/L Nats (in terms of size) would probably count as a 'state comp' in the USA. It's probably easier to cater for the UK contingent than that of the entire USA.

At the end of the day though I am just in the game for the fun. Competitions are an interesting diversion.

We have several young and several more BRAND NEW flyers in our group that have no contest experience whatsoever and very little "stick time". Basic Flight should at least get them comfortable.

We frequently fly Beginner Classic Stunt. This is a terrific opportunity for beginners to get extra flights in at a contest. There are a whole bunch of Classic eligible planes being flown by beginners, ranging from Ringmasters to Noblers.

I kinda think that the Beginner pattern is just fine, agreeing with Brett that it's tough to crash-out of an overhead and that adjusting level flight is folly..... I probably judge 250-400 flights per year and see only two or three that fly within the 4-6 foot boundry with any degree of consistancy.

See Ya