TeeCee

MFRSKC Flash # 1... our first generous sponsor has stepped up for the NMB and NIB winner's prize kite, and a custom line bag for one of the experienced flier prizes... details to be made public when we announce our venue. TeeCee

Projected date is 10 March, 2007, with a window of one week either way. The preliminary venue search is under way. The pecking order is: 1. Treasure Island 2. St. Augustine Beach 3. New Smyrna Beach 4. Central Winds Park, Winter Springs/Orlando. This AKA-sanctioned event will run NMIB (first time Multiline competitors), OMIB, OMPB, NIB (first time dualline competitors), OIB, and OPB. Registration is FREE for all first-time competitors, and a flat $10.00 for experienced fliers. The fun stuff; Mentor Challenge, IROC Mystery Ballet (the CJ will choose the kite AND the music), and Hot Tricks Shootout. This is a Novice-friendly event; all first-time competitors will get a detailed preflight brief and an individual postflight brief. PRIZES! The winner of NMIB and NIB will recieve a FREE KITE, and the winners of all other events will get competition-grade kite gear. Noteworthy for this event... as far as I know, this is the first competition outside of the NW Conference to offer Multiline Pairs Ballet. Break out your TC Ultra's and jump in! TeeCee

Nice plane. Now who wouldn't want a P-51 Mustang in that scale? Be it Rev or Spirit, something worth mentioning here is that a quad is controlled very much like an airplane in that you get roll, pitch, and yaw. A dual-line sport kite is pretty much only pitch and yaw. Welcome to wind power!

At ease, all, the prevailing opinion seems to be that it's not important what you do trickwise, only that what you do looks like it belongs there.

I think I can cover this one. All three of the examples you've stated have absolutely no bearing on how your ballet is judged; I recall that these are some specific items that new judges are admonished to ignore because they are subjective. I can even feel certain that if someone DOES let such criteria creep into their decision-making process and word gets out, that person will not be judging again. To address each item individually: From day one we are told to fly to the music WE like, music that has opportunities in dynamics, tempo changes, etc. Your choice of music isn't being judged, how you fly your kite to INTERPRET the music is. Judges are also told not to consider lyrics used in a ballet track, only the music. From me to you; if you've got a good song in mind where the instrumentation can stand on it's own, edit out the vocal track. Objectional lyrics should however be avoided as a courtesy to spectators (both of them ). Comps are not turf battles between sponsors, they are neutral territory. A truce is in effect. Picture this; you would fly NIB, so your panel might be made up of the Machine, Viper, Sea Devil, a couple of STX2.3's, and a tastefully modded Nirvana. You (Air Ouvre) might be flying AGAINST CdC, Prism, BMK, NTK, Premier, and maybe a borrowed Instigator. If the wind is approaching the high limit you might even be flying against a Mirage. The only thing you need to be concerned with is you flying your kite better than everybody else does theirs. THAT'S what counts in the judge's eyes; not what you fly but how you fly it.

And that's fair. Judge Workshops are a splendid idea. Let's take our judging responsibilities as serious as we take our flying/competing and have a judge group hug prior to the season; not in conjunction with a comp, but seperate. Judging should be proactive instead of reactive; regardless of where our judges come from, we should all know the highest standards of every component/facet of a discipline and challenge the competitors to rise to it and not the other way around. I know your own example of schooling judging panels was in a crash/tick world, but do you realize how ludicrous it is that you as a competitor should have been doing that over 4 events? There's something else that's been bothering me though, and as long as I have the floor I'm gonna use it. If Dave Gomberg's proposal to introduce kiting at Beijing in '08 flies, I submit that we are already WAAAAY behind the power curve in caliber of both flying and judging. I really want to be wrong about the judging part, I really do. I'll apologize ahead of time for my statement and also request to be educated on why I may be wrong. But on the flying part; I think if we don't do as much as possible NOW (which is already too late) to crank up our game at all levels, we are gonna get our butts handed to us. THAT'S what's really bothering me.

This isn't any reflection on you at all. We talked, and this is all purely my own idea resulting from it.

Fully agreed that tricks aren't the focal point of an AKA ballet, nor should they be. What I AM interested in is raising the taxonomy from knowledge to evaluation, so that if flyer A and B each perform an element cleanly but B executed cleaner and faster there should be no doubt among the panel who's 15% was better. My favorite Lombardiism; "Perfection is unattainable, but if you chase perfection you'll catch excellence." When we have our judge hats on, we're just as responsible for knowing what 100% of that 15% is supposed to look like as for the 100% of the other 75%.

I fly with a very talented young guy who would do extremely well in AKA or STACK competition, but does not currently compete in those formats. We were talking during a break the other day, and what he said gave me an idea or two. A specific item that came up is that most people doing the judging at our events do not know even half of the most advanced tricks by sight. This is probably a valid point; up until yesterday I myself wouldn't have known a ladole if it snuck up and bit me. If I was on a judging panel and a competitor used a ladole, I would most likely not give that flyer full credit for what appeared to be an oddball yo-fade. Is that fair to the flyer? No. Is it the flyer's fault I'm not current on newer tricks? No. Why then should he/she in effect be penalized for raising the bar? Submitting a program list before a ballet routine a la figure skating would be a step in the right direction. If I know prior to a routine that I could see a superstart/JL/backspin/roll-unroll opening combo, either a rolled-up multilazy or Insane later, a taz machine later still, and an inverse rolling susan to a 2-point landing at the end, then I can evaluate each trick for its own merits and thus the overall performance instead of being taken by surprise. I don't think there's a need to make a hard and fast requirement for sticking to the script; the flyer should be able to substitute or delete tricks on the fly pending wind conditions. All I'm interested in is being able to give a routine the score it deserves, and if I know what to look for I can do that. TeeCee