We were sitting around dreaming about such a facility in Muncie, if dreaming would only make it come true! At any rate, temps are a bit more moderate, although the sun sure does seem to be intense. Mostly good stuff going on today with hopes of an even better day tomorrow. If you aren't familiar with the setup and scoring for a Worlds competition, Mark has explained it quite well to where even I can understand it. Read on . . . .
(I know this post should be dated 8/11/2015 and not 8/12/2015, but for some reason this web builder is not letting me change it, for now at least)
Mark:
Day 10 – Tuesday August 11
Now it’s getting real. We’ve completed three days of preliminaries and things are starting to shake out. Every flight in a contest like this is important but for some reason today felt especially critical. With two solid flights for each of the USA pilots in the first two days, a good flight today would position everyone well for the Semi-Finals and take a lot of pressure off the fourth round.
Before I get into the days recap, I’ve been remiss in providing some background on the format and scoring of the event. Even for those that participate in our hobby, this event’s scoring and presentation is a little unique.
The F3A World Championship consists of 3 stages.
Stage 1, the Prelims, consists of 4 rounds of flying the P-15 Sequence (found here http://nsrca.us/index.php/call-sheets-and-aresti/p-15-aresti ). Because of the number of contestants (101 pilots from 35 countries) the pilots are divided into 4 groups. 20 judges are also divided into 4 groups of 5 judges each (Panels 1-4). Over the course of 4 days, each pilot group will fly one round in front of each judge panel until everyone has flown in front of every judge (something we refer to as “Equal Exposure”. )
The scores that you’re seeing are the composite scores of the judge panel for a particular flight. IMPORTANT NOTE: For display purposes ONLY… the scores you’re currently seeing have had the highest, and the lowest score dropped for each maneuver. The final results will utilize ALL 5 judges scores, but will use a system called TBL to statistically eliminate both conscious and unconscious bias, but since that can not be calculated until all 4 rounds are complete, eliminating highs and lows is thought to most closely match those result. What we’re currently seeing in the scores is ONLY meant to provide an indication of the outcome. The final outcome after day 4 scores may change, but likely not significantly.
The preliminary stage will keep the best 3 out of 4 normalized scores. ( Normalization takes each score and divides it by the highest score for that round, such that the high score for the round will have 1000 (1.000) and all the other scores will reflect a percentage of that high score. This makes all the rounds equal in weight.) Once all four rounds are complete, and the lowest round for each competitor is dropped, the remaining 3 rounds are combined into a single composite score.
Stage 2 – Semi-Finals. The top 30% (in this case 30 pilots) will advance to the Semi-finals where each pilot will fly 2 rounds of the F-17 sequence ( http://nsrca.us/index.php/call-sheets-and-aresti/f-15-aresti ). This will be flown completely on Friday. Of the prelim score, and the 2 semi-final scores, the best 2 of three will be kept to determine the top ten pilots.
Stage 3 – Finals. The final’s begins a brand new contest. No prior scores are carried over or have any impact on the outcome. The finals consisted of 4 flights. 2 flights of the F-17 sequence, of which each pilot will keep their best normalized score. And 2 flights of two different UNKNOWN sequences, BOTH of which must be kept. The unknown sequences are created the evening prior to the finals so that there is no opportunity to practice them in advance. The maneuvers are chosen from a catalog of over 600 existing maneuvers and are typically extremely difficult.
Back to today. After 2 days on flight line 2, we’ll spend the next 2 days on flight line 1. They’re very very similar, but the background scenery and visual reference points are completely different which can sometimes take a flight or two to get used to. Andrew was on deck at 9:30. The sun was still in the box, but low level clouds were moving slowly across the sky providing intermittent breaks in the glare. A big score was needed on this flight as CPLR had posted the highest round of the contest thus far against this judging panel (500.67) so the pressure was on.
It might as well have been another practice flight. Either he has nerves of steel, or no nerves at all… hard to tell which, but his flight was extremely clean, well-presented and received very solid scores. Every one flies in hopes of winning the round, but this is more of a marathon than a sprint, and three very good scores in the prelims has positioned Andrew well for the Semi-Finals.
Jason flew next, around 12:30, and it was a little bit of a “lather, rinse, repeat” routine from earlier in the morning. No nerves, great flight, good scores, excellent position going forward.
Judge panels changed for the afternoon and then Brett was up for his third flight. As the day progressed and the heat rises (it’s been VERY hot and humid) the air becomes more turbulent and the winds become inconsistent. Brett flew a great flight, but it wasn’t the flight he wanted, with some small inconsistencies and minor deviations that at this level of the sport result in downgrade. He still put up a good score, but not near what he’s capable of, nor what he expects from himself. He’s still in good shape for the semi-finals but you can bet he’ll be hyper focused tomorrow for round 4.
Last up on our team was Joseph, the Jr. on our team who’s impressed more than just us with his maturity and ability this week. It was clear as his flight time approached that some stress was starting to build. Luckily at 15 yrs old all it takes is helping him make fun of his dad (ok, to be fair Diesel Don is a pretty easy target at the moment) to lighten the mood. Joe’s flight suffered a bit from the thermals that were forming, and some general “in and out” moments holding the 150m line, but over all it was another excellent flight that resulted in another excellent score.
A lot can still happen tomorrow, and as I mentioned earlier in the report, the scoring as it’s being presented could be a bit skewed from what will be the final results. We are trying very hard not to get ahead of ourselves, but at this stage it would appear that the entire team will be flying on Friday in the Semi-Finals!!!
Outside of the contest there was a lot going on today. Mike Caglia (from NY) arrived to watch and support the team. It’s amazing how many supporters we have over here and how many supporters we have back home!! The comments, emails, Facebook messages, etc from such a large and diverse group of people make it that much more fun to be a participant in this event.
My new book series, “The Continuing Adventures of Diesel Don” has a new chapter today. The rental company, who have been fantastic, came back out today to swap the van’s back. The original van was undamaged (they merely drained the fuel tank and flushed the engine apparently) and they wanted to return our original van to us. We transferred all the contents (that’s a polite term for “mountains of airplane crap”) and Don and Joseph were on their way to the practice field.
20 minutes later my phone rang…
Me: “Hey Joe, what’s up? Did you get lost?”
Joe: “No, we found the field ok. But um… there’s a problem.”
Me: “I’m listening”
Joe: “It’s the van”
Me: L o n g P a u s e “Still Listening…”
Joe: “Well… you know that cheetah in Africa??” (refer to 2013 Blog for that story)
Me: “You’re killin’ me Joe… Cut to the chase, it’s a $1/min”
Long story short, a valve stem blew out on a tire while the van was sitting there. Lesson to be learned. Customer service is CRITICAL. The rental company, yet again, had someone out to the van (in the middle of a corn field I might add) within 30 minutes to put on a whole new tire, and did it with a smile and “no problem”.
Don on the other hand is clearly cursed. The only debate now is exorcism or sacrifice.
Dinner was a quiet affair outside the hotel with Pizza planning for tomorrow. I was going to share some thoughts and observations about Switzerland, but I’ll have to save that for tomorrow.