President’s Perspective
Dave Brown — AMA President
FAI — just three letters, but three letters that can surely liven up a conversation among competitive aeromodelers.
For those who might not know what the letters stand for, they are the acronym for the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the international organization representing aerosports in the world, including aeromodeling.
Recently, U.S. success in the international arena has been a mixed can of worms, with huge success in some areas (Indoor Free Flight, for example) and huge disappointment in other areas (such as Scale). In between is the gamut of emotional states.
Unfortunately, some people seem to think that anything less than a one-two-three sweep at a World Championships is failure. Those critics are quick to point out that we have some high-level competitions in this country that "rival" the World Championships. The extremists even go so far as to claim these contests are "bigger, better, and of more importance" than the World Championships. To these people, all I can say is—poppycock.
We have some very large, high-level contests in this country, and without belittling those great events, they are still not the World Championships, any more than the Boston Marathon is more prestigious than the Olympics.
In this country we seem predisposed to creating our own competitive events and then overstating their importance. Take baseball, for example. Although it is growing in other parts of the world, this is really an American sport, yet we have referred to the professional championships for baseball as the "World" Series. We have the Super Bowl for American football, while the rest of the world looks at the World Cup as the championship of football. Everywhere else in the world, Formula 1 is the open-wheeled class of automobile racing, but here we seem to be more concerned that CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) and IRL (Indy Racing League) remain divided. Let's face it: we march to the beat of a different drummer in the U.S. when it comes to competitive events, and our aeromodeling events are no exception.
We have a few events where we use the FAI rules for our domestic competition, but those seem to be the exception. Even in those classes where we do use the FAI rules, we seem prone to making slight modifications to the rules or the procedures, which leads to a little confusion or disadvantage when we actually have to fly by the pure international rules. Adding to the confusion is a lack of understanding of the rules on the part of those who stand on the sidelines and explain the reason we don't do as well as we should.
I recently received a letter in which someone stated that we would do much better at an upcoming World Championships in Canada than we did at the last one in Europe because the judges would be Americans and Canadians, rather than Europeans. This is simply not so, and shows a lack of knowledge of the rules of World Championships competition.
At all World Championships there is a maximum of one judge from a country, and the U.S. has had a judge on the panel of virtually every World Championships that uses judges. I do recognize that geography and demographics in Europe result in a heavier European weight on many judging panels, but this is unavoidable in a practical sense. If we had a "one judge per state" rule, an event would tend to have more judges from the East than from the West, because of the comparative size of the states.
How do we improve our performance in international competition? Should we bother continuing to take part? Both of these are valid questions, and I hear regularly from those who think we should abandon the FAI and forget international competition. I've even heard some say that the rest of the world should come over here to some of our premier events "if they want to see some real competition."
I also see real pride and hard work going into FAI competitions by people who see that this is the highest level of competition, whether we like the rules or not.
If we are going to improve our level of competitiveness in international competition, we need to have more competitions in which we use the international rules. We have some categories in which the team trials are the only chance for our competitors to fly under the actual rules used in international competition.
We need to use the international rules more, or we need to decide we will not take part in some events. If we are unable to inspire our members to organize more competitions that use the FAI rules, then perhaps we should not field teams in some classes where interest is insufficient and should concentrate on those in which there is sufficient interest.
We spend too much time and money on some of these events when the participation and success level is poor. The fact is that the way to field better teams is to give those teams more experience and competition. This means we need to use the FAI rules more or we need to abandon those events where participation is too low to justify the costs.
Can you imagine the success we would have if we were to send the winner of the Super Bowl to the World Cup? That would be quite a spectacle, wouldn't it?
Til next month.
Dave Brown AMA President dbrown@dbproducts.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
