Letters to the Editor
Our readers take their turn at the editorial typewriter.
We have had a number of readers suggest bringing back this venerable institution that predates — by a couple of centuries, at least — all the noisy social media channels that we have at our disposal today. But the slow motion, moderated medium which encourages carefully considered and respective dialogue still has much to recommend it, so we are more than happy to oblige. We’re delighted to kick off this series with reader Rex Ashwell’s thoughtful reply to our question about postal contests posed in the September issue.
Postal Contest Primer
You ask in [September]’s In The Air if anyone remembers participating in a postal competition.
I’m here to inform you that in New Zealand we fly the National Decentralised Competitions (NDC) every month throughout the year. This is organised by Model Flying New Zealand (MFNZ), the governing body of aeromodelling in this country, and has been running continuously for roughly as long as anyone can remember. This link will take you to the NDC page on the MFNZ website which gives a brief overview of the competition rules, results, and a calendar of events for this year: MFNZ — Model Flying New Zealand — NDC Results
As you will see, the basic competition rules allow anyone affiliated to MFNZ to compete in a range of events posted on the calendar. There are five categories, Soaring, Vintage, Free Flight, Control line and Pylon and each month there are several events in each category. If we stick to Soaring, because that is my interest (and yours too) there are four events this month, Thermal D and Thermal J which are winch launch events, plus ALES 200 and ALES Radian which are for electric soarers. These can be flown on any weekend day during September and each event must be completed on the day it was started, after which the results are posted via the website, collated by a Recording Officer and ultimately appear on the website.
The whole thing is an honesty system although most clubs that compete have an individual organiser. I am the local organiser here in the small town of Blenheim, where we have about ten reasonably keen participants, mostly retired and of varying ability using a wide variety of models. While people can fly individually, and some do, we prefer to fly as a group, so the norm is that I keep an eye on the weather and when an acceptable day looks in prospect I’ll e-mail the guys and we all front up on a Saturday morning and fly the nominated competition. It’s treated as a serious fun thing by most, but it fulfils the function of providing a competition schedule and allows us to fly with and against our club members and challenge the rest of the country with our scores.
There is that in-built weakness in this style of competition that variable weather brings, but everyone understands that and it’s swings and roundabouts as far as conditions are concerned. No-one feels particularly modest when the scores come out and you find yourself well ahead of Joe Wurts, even if you know that he was flying in a hurricane while we a had a day with endless lift, but we all know it’s not going to be a regular occurrence. It seems strange to me that relatively few people are interested in competition, especially when the most popular soaring events here are flown with basic Radians, but that seems to be a common thing around the world.
What I can say about NDC is that it has provided me with some very enjoyable flying in my retirement. I started flying 10 years ago, got hooked on soaring early on and was part of a fledgling group of inexperienced modellers who found that competition provided something that we needed. Without the NDC framework to get us started there would be no soaring competition in this area, in fact probably not much soaring, and without NDC I could not boast of twice being NDC Soaring champion and having held three NZ records, at an age when I would have thought such things impossible. Postal competitions — highly recommended.
By the way, I must compliment you on producing a wonderful e-magazine. I really missed RCSD when it ceased and I’m elated to see it ‘soaring’ again.
Regards,
Rex Ashwell
Blenheim, New Zealand
Thank you so much for that complement, Rex! Also, on behalf of all RCSD readers, thank you for bringing us up to speed on postal contests in your part of the world. We hope that others take your lead and start postal contests of their own. They’re an institution that despite their long history, are still well suited to the times in which we find ourselves.— Ed.
Send your letter via email to NewRCSoaringDigest@gmail.com with the subject ‘Letter to the Editor’. We are not obliged to publish any letter we receive and we reserve the right to edit your letter as we see fit to make it suitable for publication. We do not publish letters where the real identity of the author cannot be clearly established.
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