APPEARANCES

As a guy who builds stuff that looks as if it has been stepped on, I would like to offer my thoughts on appearance pointing at the Nats.

There has been "grumbling" of late, and even if this grumbling is way off base, it seems to me that it might be easily corrected? The grumbling comes from flyers who feel that the judge(s) are "too close" to flyers or too familiar with the airplanes themselves to be really objective.

This year I wandered over to the rc pylon racing area and spoke with several there. I believe that appearance plays a role in their grid position, or some such? Their aeroplanes are generally exquisitly finished in terms of smoothness and recognizability.

These guys would be happy to wander over and do appearance judging! They will carry no "baggage" and any implied "favoritism".

Using informed outside judges will not put an end to an individual feeling that he got "scr*wed", but would certainly lay any suggestion that the judge(s) were playing to their friends.

See Ya

Choosing the pylon guys to judge appearence was a bit easier when the Nats had all the events going on in the same general location. Now that's a bit of history that is no longer available at the National Championships. Still is a good idea though.
Judging appearence is the toughest job I've ever had! In 95 at the Tri-Cities Nats I along with Howard Rush took on the job. I thought it would be rather easy, just line them up best looking to least looking, right? Wrong! I don't recall how Howard felt about this job, but I was totally worn out afterward. If one were to be perfectly honest about it it is nearly impossible to put one plane above another when you get to the first two or three rows at the front. How in the world can one justify that the (name a model here) was better than the (another model here). I've alwaysw wondered how judges at dog or similiar animal shows can say that your Beagle is a better Beagle than your Poodle is a better Poodle.
Is there an answer to the precieved problem in beauty judging? Perhaps, but it will take someone other than myself to even approach a solution, so now, just realize that at any given meet, there is only going to be a very few (read that first row) guys that will be totally happy.

Wasn't there a flap one year when a judge recruited from the among the pylon racers put one of Al Rabe's planes on the last row, 'cause his beautiful drab finish wasn't "shiny"? Of course, a little training would have gone a long ways in that case.

>Wasn't there a flap one year
>when a judge recruited from
>the among the pylon racers
>put one of Al Rabe's
>planes on the last row,
>'cause his beautiful drab finish
>wasn't "shiny"? Of course,
>a little training would have
>gone a long ways in
>that case.

It wasn't Al. It was Ron Burn and his "Wildcat" F4F, which was a magnificent model that deserved to be in the front row of any appearance contest. Al's planes are much more capable, Ron's are more scale.

The last time we used the pylon guys, there were more howls of protest than we had this year, mostly from the northeast contingent, although noone withdrew.

Bob Hunt (who opinions I value and respect wants to get the local car painters to do the judging. It's an interesting idea, but I would personally prefer someone involved with airplanes. It's more than a painting contest. I think the real craftsmen, like Joe Reinhart, whose woodwork is simply impeccable, but who frequently does not have the flashiest paint job, should get recognition. I don't think that would happen with car painters. Claus Maikis' Grondal Nobler was absolutely gorgeous, but the paint was not super shiny, nor were all the trim lines buried, etc.

I'd be afraid professional car painters would tend to concentrate exclusively on the paint worksmanship, and not the overall appearance.

I think the right answer is to come up with at least some guidelines so that everybody knows what the judges are looking for, and to continue using people familiar with the event, but not directly competing. Larry Barickman, and several others, are working the issue.

Gang --

All your posts make sense to me. An inherent statistical problem with Likert scales is that any observer (a judge, in our case) does not want to give a max or min. That is, on a scale of 1 to 5, most participants in any experiment give a 2, 3, or 4, and not a 1 nor a 5. That is, a Likert 5 point scale, when judging things like taste of colas or whatever, is for practical purposes reduced to a 3 point scale. In our case, the published scale is 20, and few 20s or 1s are reported. So the real scale is something like 10 to 19, which is a 9 point scale, not a 20 point scale (If anyone has data that says otherwise, I would be interested).

Guidelines that would enable a judge to say that it is OK to give Paul, Billy and Windy all 20s says a bunch, and the difference in perfection in these planes is minor. That leaves a little room for, say a decent profile, is a 3, and that an 18 is pretty darned good, but not quite a Walker. We wouldn't want to see any of the great guys get an appearance deficit when they are top drawer.

For the sake of argument: Has anyone tried to develop a breakdown system similar to that used in scale comnpetition? Give 1 to 10 points for structural craftsmanship, 1 to 10 points for paint, 1 to 10 points for originality, and (with a nod to P
Walker) 1 to 10 points for scale appearance? This might be a bit complicated, but gives the judges some wiggle room for gorgeous structures with less than perfect paint, and similar situations.