Redrawing district boundaries

[Dirt Doctor]

The SW region is not the only one where great distances between contests are involved. The SC region use to have contests in El Paso and Midland/Odessa which were 3hrs apart from each other but another 3-6 hours away from most of the other SC contests. It took me 7.5 hrs to get to Ft. Worth for the regional contest last October. Even when gas was $0.70/gal the time that it took to get to contests was really the determining factor (not to mention the 2-30 constant w/sw wind that blows all of the time in west Texas)!!

The closest IMAC contest to Vicksburg is Shreveport which is about 3.5 hrs way. Wrightsville, AR is 4 hrs away and Sherman is 8 hrs away! The bottom line is that in the three western regions the contests are way far apart!

 

[ExtraJohn]

Well the NorthEast Region magicly seems to end someplace around Maryland, I would really like to try IMAC, but driving over 6 hours to attend a major event just to learn and see if I like it is just silly.

A NORTHEAST Region that actually INCLUDES the NORTHEAST would be a great start.

 

[wolfpack]

Living in Maryland gives me the ability to make around 7 events a year that are within a 3 to 4 hour drive and that spoils me a little. But with that said I would have never tried IMAC if it weren't easy to get to so I think if IMAC wants to grow they need to find a way to have events closer to people who are out in the neither lands. IMAC is very addicting and gives your flying a real purpose and if a lot more people were just exposed to it I think IMAC would grow a lot. The problem I see is that the IMAC community is very small (too small) so due to that fact alone I don't know if redistricting will help much. Our portion of the hobby is so small I will ask you this? When was the last time you seen a major manf. design and sell a plane that was all geared for IMAC . I mean a plane where not one single word about it's 3D capabilities in any of their advertising?

 

[Rolling.Circle]

Well, being from Maryland, it's nice where we can do both Northeast and Southeast contests. We are very lucky that there's a few CDs from around the MD area that are willing to do the work to put on one, if not two, contests a year. We are doing Hurlock and CAPI twice a year now. It's awesome!

The 40%er doesn't 3D well. still I fly freestyle at almost every IMAC contest... just on smaller more agile planes with lighter wing loading.

 

[wolfpack]

The more I think about this subject and the more contest I go to I am coming to the thought that if some 1 day events were put on it would greatly increase participation. You could have your pirates (that's for Earle) meeting at 0800 get your unkown and start flying at 0830. Fly two known rounds and than the unknown. If you have time do the freestyle and hand out the wood at the end of the day. That would save the CD a whole weekend of pulling his hair out and a lot of money on hotel rooms and such. I come from past stints racing go-carts and long distance cycling (100 mile races) both of which mostley have one day events as almost all other sports do so why can't we. Than you could save your whole weekend events for the ones that already draw big crowds. I feel a lot of guys could get away for the day but not the whole weekend, I mean lets face it you don't see many wives tagging along at these events. The only place I would expect to see less females is a World of Warcraft tournament LOL!!! Were just like gaming nerds the only thing diffrent is our toys have engines.

 

[Andy Thomas]

I agree that more 1 day events would have a much greater impact than just redrawing the lines. I am pretty much done with the sport. The travel from Minneapolis and long weekend commitment was just to much. Every contest was 8+ hours or 14 for Columbus. If there was interst I would maybe consider bringing back the Twin Cities IMAC Challenge as a 1 day event that concentrated on MN, IA, WI. If everyone wasn't so burned out travelling for long weekends more flyers could justify a going to nats and make that a contest worth going to.

 

[aarestor]

Tried to sell the idea of 1 day events locally but no one was interested. Local participation is very hard to get. Not sure of why, they will attend but not fly. We are going into our 5th year of hosting our event. Ours is the only one within 400 miles. We usually have around 8-10 fliers.

 

[wolfpack]

The one thing that has me scratching my head is after attending 5 events this year I have brought up the one day thing to guys who all say, "that would never work", but yet these are the same guys wanting to show up sunday morning fly the unkown and go home. The last two events I attended we were done with both by 11:00 sunday morning and we hit the road by 11:15. We could have done the uknown late sat afternoon and saved the hotel cost sat night. You run 2 flight lines on sat and you would have no problem getting 3 knowns and an unkown in buy 6:00 pm, even with a field of 15 you could get it done. Just my .02 cents.

 

[C-Hymas]

Personally I like the two day events. I get to most of the contests on Thursday evening and practice Friday with the contest being Saturday and Sunday. I'm lucky enough to have made 6 events all within a 4 hour drive.

 

[thurmma]

Personally I like the two day events. I get to most of the contests on Thursday evening and practice Friday with the contest being Saturday and Sunday. I'm lucky enough to have made 6 events all within a 4 hour drive.

That would be awesome! My drives range from 3 1/2 to 7 hours. I try to get out early Friday morning so I can get some practice in Friday evening and then as soon as we are done on Sunday, I am beating feet to get home at a somewhat decent time. I think we will have one or two contests closer to me next year which will be nice. I made 5 contests this year and had a blast!