WC F2B JUDGING ANALYSIS

To Mr. Leonard Newmann:

I'm trying to post some very usefull and interesting info that Mr. Bruno Delor from France sent me regarding the subject. There are two files: WORD (19K) and EXCEL (100k) both zip compressed. No problem to attach the Word file, but I can not compress the Excel file any further.
Is there any other way to attach this type of files exceeding the 50K limit?

Thanks,
Claudio Chacón
ARGENTINA

it is on:

http://www.slovanet.sk/orsia/Sheets-F2B_WC2004.xls

and

http://www.slovanet.sk/orsia/WC2004_F2BAnalysis.doc

Purely from a spectator point of view, the information presented here would indicate that the International judges 1,3 and 4 determined the World champion. Judges 2 and 5 had very little impact on the outcome simply from the fact that they were thrown out as the high and low scores for most of the flights.

I watched and video taped all of the qualifying rounds and noticed a distinct difference in the patterns as presented by the International competitors and the US competitors. The International flyers tend to present the pattern in a smooth flowing manner while the US flyers tend to fly a bit smaller more aggressive pattern.

From a personal perspective I think Bill Werwege flew a less aggressive pattern than the other US competitors as can be seen from the resulting scores. Whether or not this was the deciding factor is pure speculation on my part but it seems to have been of some significance.

A personal observation on judging: I believe that all judges try to be unbiased in their interpretation of the pattern as presented. I also believe that judges tend to favor the style of flying that they are most accustomed to seeing. Not as an intentional thing but more as a preference since judging is highly subjective. In all of my modeling career I have never really complained about the judging of an event since I have stood in their shoes. I for one would applaud the FAI judges for the job that they have done and hope that others would do the same.

John Hill

The question is if exactly that way of analyze is that proper. Especially fact that the analyze expacts results as "proper" and single judge as that "making mistakes". I do not think there is any seriouse way to check judges different that showing them "perfect pattern" with hidden mistakes letting them chance to find them. I hope Keith R. is hard working .

There is also anothor problem - that working judge making enough differences tend to fall to "bag guys" column, that is also counter produtive.

Howevever the analyze is only somehow presented fact. We can see something important or not.

What I am missing on this analyze is, that some peple mentioned permanent growing of given score. I do not mean only this year, it is typical for every WC or even every contest. We have even tool disallow it - warm up flights. But is is not enough - remember points given to Ted in first qualifying round? It was not so windy and he flew well compared to his flight end of second round? It enough to compare flyers from first day of second qualifying round (it was still windy) and the same flyers from first round. Almost all got better score in second ... well beside such unlucky guys like me and Kim D.

I think that tracking the judges scoring has some merit from a consistency point of view. If you are going compare scoring trends of the judges I think that they should be compared on a competitor by competitor basis against the other judges. If you have a judge that is consistently high through the majority of the round and only low on a few flights during the round you should compare the other scores of the judges against his. The same thing applies to a judge that is consistently low and then score high on other flights.

On the other hand a judge that tracks down the middle may not be doing justice to the competitors even though he/she is very consistent. To me that would indicate that he/she has a very narrow range in scoring.

One other thing to keep in mind is the scoring scheme used by the FAI for competition is based on a 1-10 score multiplied by a K factor. On high K maneuvers a two or three tenths point swing can have a big impact on the final score while the lower K factor maneuvers have a minimal impact. Any competitor can make a big jump by hitting those high K maneuvers.

I think judges tend to be a bit tight with their scoring of the first flights in the first round leaving some room for better flights to come. I think that this is purely human nature at work here and nothing covert about it. Of course you have to consider other factors such as weather in this scoring equation. As you say Ted put up some good numbers early in the round when the conditions were moderate. The conditions worsened later in the round, which put other competitors at a disadvantage to some respect. The luck of the draw or fate or whatever you want to call it plays a factor here too..

The problem is, that such statisticall tricks can answer how good are results (how much we can beleive them) or what is the probability that they reflects reality. But cannot answer WHO is that right judge and who is wrong (or if then only again with the same probability that we know those proper results).

I will give you example. I crashed model before second roud. After first round in relatively consistent air conditions I was on 11 place. After the second round half by half in windy and calm conditions I went to 26th place, just because that half had better conditions. And now I look to those sheets. If you look how all 5 judges gave me points, you will see that ONE judge pushed me by 23 placing down in relation to all other judges to place 49 instead of 26. And now tell me - is it because of low quality of judge, or because he did bigger differences between good and wrong (for whatever reason - for example because of better conditions) in the second round - what automatically pushed me down?

Sure we need some "analyze" just to know how it looks but I do not think it can count as an objective method to "judge" judges.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-05-04 AT 07:04 AM (CDT)
 
Igor,

I am not really sure that there is an answer for this. It is possible that the low scoring judge had a wider scoring range than the other judges. Due to the scoring method used in FAI this can be a significant variation from a good maneuver to a not so good maneuver. On the high K factor maneuvers point range fluctuation can be quite large.

Consider a judge that has a point range variation of .8 to a judge that has a point range variation 1.8. On any maneuver, especially the high K stuff, that variation will significantly affect the overall score.

Does this mean that the judge is a bad judge? Not really but indeed it may appear that way. Did all of the other judges on your second round flight drop in scoring? If so the point range variation of the low judge had a greater impact.

AS I stated earlier I think all judges, whether FAI or AMA, try to be as unbiased as possible. This is a very highly subjective sport and the odd anomaly in scoring can be expected. I think every competitor in this sport has had this occur at some point in time. I for one appreciate all of the hard work that the judges and other officials put in to make this event work.

>>>I am not really sure that there is an answer for this.<<<

Yes this is exactly what I mean.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-04-04 AT 07:18 PM (CDT)
 
>I watched and video taped all of the qualifying rounds and
>noticed a distinct difference in the patterns as presented
>by the International competitors and the US competitors. The
>International flyers tend to present the pattern in a smooth
>flowing manner while the US flyers tend to fly a bit smaller
>more aggressive pattern.

Who flew small from the US?

Ted flew larger than anyone I observed. Some of practice flights were in the 70 degree range. He looked quite different than I had ever seen before. Maybe he changed his style for the WC's.

Walker flew all of his verticals over his head. His pattern was not particularly small (50 to 60 degrees), although it was aggressive. All in all this about the same style of pattern Paul has been flying in Muncie with his 4 stroke rig. He was going very fast though.

Billy flew 45 degrees in qualifier and went to a 60 degree pattern in the finals. He told me he did it on purpose. His last 60 degree pattern was beautiful, and he had great air, much better than the French kid who flew in the rain and was only a few points behind.

The smallest and tightest corner patterns were not from the US fliers (much to my surprise). The Japanese and French flew much smaller and tighter than the US fliers. I would not say the US Team was more "aggressive" on the whole. I guess it depends on your definition.

All in all I think the outcome was accurate. The best patterns won.

Also, I saw nothing special about the Chinese. They were good in bad conditions but were very unimpressive in the good conditions. Their airplanes seemed to be looking for lift.

No where in that statement did I state that the US competitors flew small. Flying smaller than the competition does not equate to flying small. It's a relative statement and not a definitive one. Yes Paul was big on his verticle maneuvers but he was smaller and much more aggressive on the other maneuvers. Both Ted and Billy opened up their patterns and scored higher than Paul. I think that Paul was much more accurate but that is not what the judges were looking for.

Contact Richard a get a set of the Worlds tapes and you can judge for your self the flying styles. The perspective from video tape is an eye opening experience.

>>I watched and video taped all of the qualifying rounds and
>>noticed a distinct difference in the patterns as presented
>>by the International competitors and the US competitors. The
>>International flyers tend to present the pattern in a smooth
>>flowing manner while the US flyers tend to fly a bit smaller
>>more aggressive pattern.
>
>Who flew small from the US?
>
>Ted flew larger than anyone I observed. Some of practice
>flights were in the 70 degree range. He looked quite
>different than I had ever seen before. Maybe he changed his
>style for the WC's.

Indeed, there were some changes, particularly in the area of avoiding, at all costs, "banging" any corners. However, you are incorrect about the sizes, and the relative size. Ted was not flying consequentially larger than most. Not small, but not significantly off the average. The smallest I saw, on a consistent basis, was Yokoyama, who, very much like 1999 when he made the NATs flyoff, was on the verge of undersize. The entire Japanese team was probably the smallest overall. The majority of the pilots at the W/C were noicably larger than typical NATs top competitors, as was pretty clear on Top 20 day. It doesn't stand out when everybody is close to the same. But I bet they were pretty surprised when they saw David for the warmup, and then a regular W/C flight right afterwards!

The sizes seemed to have no effect, positive or negative, smaller or larger, on the *posted* score. No one was far enough off average to make it an issue.

>The smallest and tightest corner patterns were not from the
>US fliers (much to my surprise). The Japanese and French
>flew much smaller and tighter than the US fliers. I would
>not say the US Team was more "aggressive" on the whole. I
>guess it depends on your definition.

Correct about Japanese, not correct about the French. The French team were, overall, in the middle of the pack, and did not stand out size-wise. They did have impressively tight corners, leading to the extreme slowing in the maneuvers. Remi's airplane, in particular, gave the impression of coming to a stop in the corners, and it noticably accelerated and decellerated in the maneuvers, particularly squares. The corners were *very* tight.

I assume this is the reason for the "aggressive/not aggressive" comments. It seemed to drive the crowd particularly crazy, as normally, airplanes that *look* that gutless generally fly as if they are gutless, and in fact are a hallmark around here of a second-rate airplane. Of course, "appearance of gutlessness" is not a judging criterion, and the airplanes were completely capable of going where they needed to. And in fact, they flew with not much degradation at all in the wind, where a truly "gutless" airplane would just fall to pieces. The conclusion is that it was a *look*, not a reality.

There was *absolutely no* appearance of "gutlessness" in any of the US fliers. Extremely positive everywhere - which is *still* not a judging criteria. But there was never any hint of slowing down, wavering, anything. Up, down, sideways, same speed, same power everywhere on the hemisphere. That was grossly different than, say, Remi's airplane.

I think a combination of this look/style, combined with the varying degrees of understanding about how grossly the K-factor changes the event, was why there were so many widely varying assessments among the casual viewers.

>Also, I saw nothing special about the Chinese. They were
>good in bad conditions but were very unimpressive in the
>good conditions. Their airplanes seemed to be looking for
>lift.

Paul mentioned that their airplane had previously been very light - and these models weren't light. They were also quite a good example of the "K-factor" effect. Hard to imagine a 5-time world champion who can't seem to manage a reasonably round round loop. But that's the K-factor for you - the rest of the pattern is a warmup for the three manuevers that really count - triangle, square 8, and hourglass. Bad takeoffs and round loops kill you in AMA - but Han bouned takeoffs, had funny points on the bottom of the round loops, etc, and it doesn't really matter that much. Get the to Square 8, and it was all there (assuming you don't care about corners too much).

LAST EDITED ON Aug-04-04 AT 09:23 PM (CDT)
 
Brett,

Your assessment of the World competition pretty well coincides with what I observed. The video tapes seem to justify these observations. The term *agressive pattern* was actually used by one of the FAI judges at the end of the Worlds. I assume that this opinion is in part due to the statements that you made on the performance of the US airplanes as opposed to those of the other competitors.

Maybe the International judges are more attuned to the performance of the European style airplanes.

Igor,

Thank you for the effort and comprehensiveness of these xls!

It almost makes one wonder whether the F2B WC is to assess the flying or the judges... <g> I wish there were a way to compare the flying in as much detail.

Thanks again!

Is it really a good idea to throw out the high and low score with five judges? The standard error of the mean decreases as the number of observations increases. If one judge consistantly scores low and another consistantly scores high, throwing their scores out has little effect on the average score, but increases the standard error of the mean. If who scores high and who scores low varies from flight to flight, throwing out the high and low scores means that fights are, in fact, judged by different sets of judges. How about some discussion of this among the large number of you who know more about statistics than I do?

ask Brett. He has all the answers on statistics.

>Is it really a good idea to throw out the high and low score
>with five judges? The standard error of the mean decreases
>as the number of observations increases. If one judge
>consistantly scores low and another consistantly scores
>high, throwing their scores out has little effect on the
>average score, but increases the standard error of the mean.
> If who scores high and who scores low varies from flight to
>flight, throwing out the high and low scores means that
>fights are, in fact, judged by different sets of judges. How
>about some discussion of this among the large number of
>you who know more about statistics than I do?
>
>Jim

I discussed on previous occassions and on a recent thread

http://www.clstunt.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=9939&forum=DCForumID1&omm=31&viewmode=threaded

I am not a statistician, but have developed ways to help Warren and Gary assess how judges have performed at our Nats and Team Trials. In those cases where high and low scores are eliminated, little or no difference is made in the placing of individual competitors if the high or low scores were not thrown out.

At the 2002 World Championships, information was provided to the Aerobatics Teams during a meeting one evening to duscuss proposed F2B rules changes that an examination of two or three previous World Championships showed that little or no difference would have been made in the rusults of those Championships if the high and low scores had not been eliminated in the tabulation of posted scores.

In essence, throwing out high and low scores is more eyewash than eliminating any intentional bias or reducing the effect of inaccaurate scoreing, whether intentional or not. With only 5 judges, a single judge can make a difference in the outcome of the event whether there is intentional bias or not and regardless if high or low scores are thrown out or not.

There are statistical methods to determine the accuracy of individual judges and also if there is intentional bias intering in his or her scores. This requires a fairly complex normalization process that I think only statisticians can comprehend. The final results are not know until all of the scores from all of the judges for all of the maneuvers for all of the flights are recorded. This process has been presented in Stunt News several years ago and has been developed for our use in Stunt by George Buffalano of Maryland. His program has been used by the FAI to assess judge performances in the past. This is the program that was championed by Bob Baron several years ago. The response then from the PAMPA membership was essentially that our stunt community is not ready to have to wait until after the contest is over for the computer to do its calculations and then post who won.

I find it interesting the several comments in this thread. At the World Championships, it has been mentioned that three of the five judges were really the ones determining the placings of the competitors. So please explain to me why this might be considered a problem. Then others have mentioned that some judges are high and at other times they are low. As I have mentioned previously, in an ideal world, one judge would always score low and another judge would always score high. Yet, as I explain in our training sessions and at judging clinics, those judges are doing their job and should not alter their scoring if for some reason they perceive their scores are being thrown out as high or low. (There is the situation, as I have also previously mentioned, and it is rare, where a judge uses the wide range of scoring available and scores particularly low on particularly poor flights and really high on really good flights. In this situation, it might appear that the judge is being incosistent until his ranking of the competitors is compared to the overall ranking based on all judge's scores.) I think a bigger problem is that in order to not be thrown out as either high or low score, some judges will score "in the middle of the road" and used a very small band of scores in the middle of the scoring range. This gives the appearance that his scores track very well to the "average" simply because there is not much difference between his scores and any average score nor will there be much difference between that judge's score for the best flight of the day and the worst flight of the day. (We have encountered this at many of our Nats and Team Trials.) In my opinion, this judge is doing very little to help determine the placings of the competitors regardless of the quality of each flight.

One cannot just look at the numbers as posted at the beginning of this thread and determine how well any individual judge performed. As mentioned, there are some very sophisticated statistical methods to measure judge performance. Another way is to list the average scores posted by each competitor in descending order. Then compare each judge's score to each of these competitors. You will find for some judges, that each judge's scoring track will follow the same trend to some degree as the the overall average. You will also find that other judges do not even come close.

Another way at looking at this is to use the ordinal placings for each judge of each of the competitors. With a good experienced and well trained group of judges, their individual ordinal placings will correspond very closely to the overal placings based on averaged scores from all of the judges.

One thing needs to be remembered when looking at this kind of information. In a perfect world where any one judge would make the same assessment of any single flight the same as any other judge, we would only need to have one judge and any contest. The fact that multiple judges are used at our major contests (even mandated in FAI competition) is recognition that different judges will assess patterns in different ways. This is inherent and a significant factor in our jubjective event.

I could prepare the charts from the data at the beginning of this thread to explain at least in part what I am talking about. Right now, my situation is getting sort of complicated as we are soon to pack this computer and move to another state. I flat do not have the time to run this out. For those who are really interested and want to criticize what happened at this World Championships, I would suggest that the average scores for each flight be charted in descending order and then compare the indivudual judges's scores to this average. This is best done by round. There is also the problem in these comparisons at this World Championships during the qualifictions rounds that there were 3 days of really fairly rough wind conditions, the the fourth day where half of the competitors got to fly in almost ideal wind conditions. This one day skewed the overall placings. I feel confident that the top 5 to 10 pilots still made the finals. It is just that the placings from from somewhere in the top 10 to the bottom of the list did not necessarily provide an accurate placing of each competitor based on overall ability. In other words, the "luck of the draw" allowed some pilots who flew on that fourth day to place higher than they would have had they had to fly in the same conditions as the other half of the field had to do the day before. But is still possible to assess how each individual judge performed in these conditions. It is just a factor that needs to be considered when trying to understand what all of these numbers mean.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-05-04 AT 09:37 AM (CDT)
 
Snip.. Brett buck "The sizes seemed to have no effect, positive or negative, smaller or larger, on the *posted* score. No one was far enough off average to make it an issue."

I would add further to this.. "Sizes, shapes, intersections, seemed to have no effect"

Ive studied the tapes more than anyone else due to the fact ive now watched close to 100 hours of footage.. Im at a loss to explain the results.
If we are talking flying rule book patterns, The japanese were closest BANG on 45.
If we are talking about who was making INTERSECTIONS the most, you would look at walker..
If you are talking about who flew the worst.. you would look at....
Well some things are better left unsaid.
If you are talking about loops that are "ovals on the side"
the list goes ON and ON..

---

I know im going to be HATED by the large stunt community for this question/comment.
However, it MUST be asked.. "Does anyone disagree with 1st place at the world champs? "
By this i mean did 1st place, OUTFLY the other 14 compeditors.. and dont say "yes" just becasue he was american.
Legitimatly THINK about it.
I will put in my 2 cents, I thought there were better patterns flown in the final. hate me if you wish.. Its my opinion based on how i interpret the Rules " intersections " and Shapes of squares ect..
Tapes SHOW billy missing interesections, sometimes by as much as 1" on the screen.. Not overlapping shapes.. ect..

Xin ping, Flew most precise. But again, its only my observations, and I for one will be the 1st to congratulate Billy on his fine 1st place and was a well deserved champion.
This isnt the question tho.. The question is..
"Does anyone disagree with 1st place at the world champs?"

Im not saying i think he shouldnt have won.. Im just saying, My interpretation of the rules reads.. 45 degree patterns intersections starting and finishing on the 1st loop. These points need to be addressed.

Yes he missed intersections many times. ... As well as all others did. BTW, the pattern is not only about intersections, it is also not about only sizes, and not only about levels and tight corners.

And for that question if he was really the best is very simple answer. For that limited probability where judges (every judge) missed final results aproximatelly by 4 places vhat is up to 10%, the probability that he was the best is relatively low, but certainly highest probability from all other contestants ... that is what that analyze says.

>Snip.. Brett buck "The sizes seemed to have no effect,
>positive or negative, smaller or larger, on the *posted*
>score. No one was far enough off average to make it an
>issue."
>
>I would add further to this.. "Sizes, shapes, intersections,
>seemed to have no effect"
>
>Ive studied the tapes more than anyone else due to the fact
>ive now watched close to 100 hours of footage.. Im at a loss
>to explain the results.

With shapes, you may have a point. I saw some sub-optimal shapes that didn't seem to hurt very much (assuming we are talking about the 3 relevant maneuvers) In particular hourglasses with the vertical axis tilted or uneven bottom or top lengths.

But I don't necessarily agree on the intersections (and other precision aspects). Despite the many shape oddities, Han, Remi, and really all the guys who were competitive managed to hit the intersections very well. In fact, a lot of the worst shape errors appeared to result from hitting the intersection at all costs. Han in particular seemed to be really good at "fudging" the corner radii on his square 8 so that it came out in the right place. If he started a little late, the corner tightened to make the right horizontal position, and if a little early, he opened it up. Overall, the corners seemed to be compromised on the soft side just to make absolutely sure. Remi seemed to take the opposite approach - wait till he hit the "trigger point", then just bury the controls and count on the very tight radius to make it come out right - which works fine if you have a very good timing on where the trigger point was. Of course, Paul hit his intersections, he's Paul Walker, but I would not discount most of the Top 15's abilities in that area, either.

A more typical US approach is to make sure the shapes are very consistent, and then work on trying to get the intersections to line up. That's because shape errors really kill you, due to both the judging emphasis (which I think is more comprehensive) and the fact that the "straight-up" scoring gives you many more opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot.

But, overall, hitting 5 feet flat every time seemed to be the most important thing by far. I tracked a few maneuver scores, and it seemed that almost any shape didn't seem to make a difference as long as the bottom was flat and at 5 feet. I saw some pretty distorted hourglasses with flat 5-ft bottoms that apparently scored well (Han, Remi, and in fact several others). And I also saw what I would consider a nearly-perfectly-shaped hourglass of Teds (top and bottom perfectly parallel, vertical axis vertical, and absolutely perfect symmetry and angles), with a slightly scooped bottom, receive 5's and 6's. 5 points? I must have missed where he crashed. Low didn't seem to help anything, BTW - people who came out low seemed to get pretty well dinged for it.

That was the one thing that impressed me the most about the W/C flying. People would tend to be all over the place, but anyone competitive wound up level at 5 feet at the end.

I am not saying it's wrong - far from it. Implicit in this analysis is that the scores reflected the flying in some way. But it's definitely a different emphasis that US pilots are used to. Which is what everybody has been saying for years.

I must agree with Brett on this. Some of the flights that I watched were, IMHO, very good and close to the rule book definition. I was a bit surprised when these flights did not score as well as one might think. The high scoring flights seem to be a bit more open and with the definite emphasis on hitting good 5 foot bottoms.

Pilots that could adjust to what the judges were looking for had improved scores over those that did not make the adjustment. Of course weather plays an important role in any outcome and sould not be discounted. My personal opinion is there were some competitors that should have made the final 15 that did not because of the varying wind conditions.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-05-04 AT 11:20 AM (CDT)
 
SNIP :
I tracked a few maneuver scores, and it seemed that almost any
shape didn't seem to make a difference as long as the bottom was flat and at 5 feet.

Ok brett.. Now be HONEST with me here.
Are you going to sit there and tell those that werent at the event that Remi beringer Flew 5 ft heights??
Comeon!
Add another 2 - 3 foot and you are SOMEWHERE near ballpark.

Ive got footage of remi from side on, during a flight, and I made the comment ON TAPE "yes thats what the judges are looking for 50+ degree tops and 10 foot pullouts. "

Now naturally i was fudging it a little, but MANY people standing around commented " Wow that was high.. "

6 - 8 Foot EASILY people... You think about it brett, THINK LONG and hard, you will agree.

----

From the shape P.O.V I think if you compared Billys squares to Yokoyama's squares, one was closer to text book.

One was I__I
One was I_I

Which is which, find out on the next series of World champs mastermind.

Ive worked out matimatically on the field the correct length base a square needs to be when flown at 45 degree's, Its VERY short.

1/8th of a lap. ( or there abouts )

PJ

It's not what you, Brett or I observed that counts. It's what the judges saw in the patterns that count. We can either agree with them or disagree but they have the final say. The judging panel selected the World Champion based on the patterns presented.

On thinking about a hypothetical situtation. Suppose I am asked to be one of five judges, and that high and low scores are going to be thrown out. That means I would spend a day in the sun, doing my very best to give each maneuver the score it deserves, but with the likelyhood that some or all of my effort will be ignored. I don't think so. You'll need to ask some other sucker.

I was at the WC Friday and Saturday. Several of us observed the F2B finals with great interest. We discussed each competitors flight and pretty much noted the errors that everyone here has pointed out. We had definite opinions on the 'best' flights of day and they did not necessarily agree with the judges placement. However, all of us are used to flying with AMA scoring. All of us are judges, one a NATS level judge. We are NOT used to the effects of the K-factors. Flying the high K-factor manuevers well can greatly compensate for a number of boo-boos in lower scoring manuevers.

So, don't degrade anyone's finish! All competitors flew under the eye of a mixture of INTERNATIONAL judges. This should tend to minimize any bias. I certainly liked certain flights better than others, but the results were determined by the JUDGES PERSPECTIVE of each manuever.

Fred

This is one of those difficult subjects, that is always involved in personal, and sometimes emotional feelings. I think that we have somewhere overlooked the point that the flier that flies the closest to the rules, should score the highest points. I was there, I competed, and I think that every comment here agrees that we can't fly to the rules, and be in the money! It's all very well, to have the vast experience of the top teams with their coaches and general back-up team. What about the rest of us "mortals?" We only have the rule book, and at this point in time, we are saying clearly that we need to get used to the judges particular likes and dislikes. What about the next world champs? What if we are just getting to used to what these folks like, and they change them for a new team of judges. Do we start all over from square one again?

Surely the way to stop this sort of problem, is to find a better way of training judges, so that everyone has a common understanding? Just asking.

Perplexed, I was, and a little "hot" a few years ago as I packed my plane for the drive back home from the Nats. On seeing a highly ranked flyer coming my way, I cornered him and asked how he dealt with flying to different judges' percieved bias. He said just don't even try. "Read the rulebook, atttempt to understand it and fly your best to that standard", sez he. So I took that advise to heart and for nine years now I've continued to leave the Nats perplexed and a little "hot". But what a ride!! dale gleason

True, Look i agree with what everyone is saying, about the judging, and by no means take this as a "judging bashing" thred, it IS however a "judging analysis" thred, by which we should analysis what was flown and what was scored and try to determine if in our opinion as a flying group we agree or disagree.

Thats all..

Conditions aside, there is one word that needs to be adressed.

That word... "Ballooning"

I wish I had a dollar for everytime that I have heard this I could retire and buy my own island. I have been both a competitor and a judge in my 50+ years in modeling. I am here to tell you that judging is not an easy job and will change your whole perspective on the sport. I encourage every competitor or sport flyer to volunteer to judge at their local or regional events.

If anyone has never done the job don't complain about the judging after all judging is purely subjective.

Yes there are variations in scores from round to round. Sometime they go up other times they go down. Is this deflating rather than ballooning?