To make a fun, pleasing freestyle mix:
- Cut your music after or before a chorus/section of a song, not just based on time. I can't stand when someone's music cuts out right after the intro to a song or something because they needed another 25 seconds of music and didn't care about how it sounded. You wouldn't get away with this in any other art form.
- Don't try to force too much variety. Pick a song with a smooth section that breaks into a faster beat or something; sticking Vivaldi between rock and techno sounds awkward.
- Pick music that is easy to appreciate. This is hard; classic rock is hard to fly to, pop music is so overplayed that it will bore most people. Dubstep will irritate the old people in the crowd (besides Gyro). Listen to a hundred new songs and you might find one that you can fly to. Listen to commercials, movies, video game, TV shows, Shazam is your friend.
To make a good flight:
- Pick a wide variety of maneuvers, don't do rolling harriers the whole flight. This is where practice really comes in, as soon as you start to improvise 90% of the time you are going to start repeating and abusing your bag of tricks. Any pilot is pretty much capable of enough variety to make an interesting and successful flight if he or she flies it correctly. Video tape your flight or record it on the sim and review.
- Position your maneuvers correctly. Don't do spins off at 3 o'clock, do them at the middle or end of the flight line. Judges and spectators will notice it more if you put your maneuvers the wrong place versus if you do them at the wrong point in the music.
- Don't fly anything that you have any chance of screwing up. Can't do a rifle loop perfectly every time? Don't do one. Can't nail your pop-tops every time? Do a blender instead. One mistake hurts you more than a repetitive or low difficulty flight
To win every competition:
- Read the rules, make sure you satisfy them as well as you can, even if it makes your flight less fun or interesting to watch and fly. Watch a winning freestyle flight from one of the top guys some time. That awkward boring slow serious section in the middle of a fast and technical flight? It's there because it's in the rules.
- This one took me
forever to learn: Don't fly over the judge's heads (not literally). I mean don't do anything the judge's can't recognize immediately. Make things clear and simple. The sad truth is that even at the highest levels, judges often don't know what they are looking at for most of the flight, and they are only going to see the flight once. Very often they are not high level RC freestyle pilots. Often they can't appreciate a rifle roll, and interesting complex geometry like a snake with 1 1/2 snaps on the direction change is going to be lost on them. Gernot Bruckman wins countless freestyle competitions, and watch one of his flights some time. The level of difficulty isn't nearly as high as some other pilots who he beats. And that's because the judges don't know that, they see pretty maneuvers with tasteful and varied music and a big, gorgeous airplane. This isn't to disparage Gernot in any capacity, the dude is no doubt an incredible pilot. In fact of all the pilots I've watched all over the country, Gernot has to be in my top 3. He has just figured out the system and knows how to win.
- You can't. Bad judging pops up a lot. Sorry, that's how it is. Check out Tetsuo Onda's flight from the German Challenge 2013:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcsmw7OEjgI and then check out Donatas Pauzuolis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUYz29ZP1_E . You can't tell me Donatas' flight did not have more precision, variety, and choreography. But Onda flew over a beam and he had VPP so he beat him. If you are looking for a competition where the best pilot/flight always wins, do something without judging like sailplanes or pylon racing.
I've probably said way too much.
Lolz