2006 Judging Seminar and Pattern Primer
Richland, WA
Written by Gordon Anderson, NSRCA District 8 Vice President

We held our annual Judging Seminar on April the 22^nd in Richland, Washington.  We try to move the event around the northwest and this is the first time in a long while that the event was held in the Tri-City area.  I was able to use the Guest House at Battelle, where I work.  The facilities were great and nicely setup for this type of event.

We had 11 people attend the training that was provided by Gary McClellan.  Gary did his usual fantastic job!  As is always the case there were lots of questions and interaction in the group.  We also spent some time going through the new FAI routines that we will see for the first time this season.

Judging Seminar Group Shot.

Thanks to Gary for all his efforts in setting up the class and to my wife Meri for taking care of us all day, including lunch.

We had intended to sponsor a Pattern Primer event on Sunday, but the weather did not cooperate.  The wind was just too strong and no one wanted to risk their aircraft.  This seems typical of 2006, very little practice due to the challenging weather.

At the close of the Judging Seminar we held an informal NSRCA D8 meeting and discussed a number of issues.  Most of the discussion was centered on updating our District Points procedure.  The current system rewards the pilot who attends the most contests and is not necessarily the best performer.  After much discussion we came up with the following procedure:

1.)    The last contest of the season in D8 will be the District Championship and the points accumulated during this contest will be doubled when calculating your final standings.

2.)    Three additional contests, of the pilot’s choice, will be used to calculate your final score.  These contests must be D8 events.

I would like to hear from the pilots that could not attend the Seminar to make sure this new procedure is acceptable.

In addition to the district points procedure we also discussed a few other issues that I have listed below:

1.)    The group agreed that the current style of awards, pictures and graphics personalized for the event, should be continued.  This is a pretty low cost solution and pilots seem to like the results.  We will, at least at the contest where I participate; provide a group picture with the contest name to everyone participating.

2.)    We discussed setting the contest dates as soon as possible and this season we will try to define the dates for 2007 as soon as the 2006 season finishes.

Thanks to all for the valuable input and helpful discussion.