Re: Don't split up the trick competition.

Subject Re: Don't split up the trick competition.
From abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley)
Date Wed, 3 Jun 1998 08:37:24 GMT
Newsgroups rec.kites 
Hans Jurgen von Lengerke
> get their act together, etc. So the competition will last up to 1 hour
> of which only 1/3 will be flying time. I think we should try to get
> this time down and have one suggestion:

We didn't have any announcement of the running order on Sunday, nor did we make any efforts to get the next pair up and ready. In future, we should do this to speed things along. 

> What if we let the music just run through with something that's bound
> to be fairly monotone.

Might get very boring. If you're not into house or techno then it might get very annoying, very quickly.

I agree that I would like to see a 3 to 4 minute piece of music being used so that we can fly one flyer for 30s, the other for the next slot, and so on. This gives the fliers a little more time and gives them a chance to recover from a wing wrap, crash or other failure.

This is the format that the original "Trick Competition" rules state. However, the more that I read the original rules (I've translated the essence of it from French to English), the more I realise that we're doing something fundamentally different.

The difference is music. According to the rules, the French trick competition has no music. Speedy definately mentioned music, but I can only assume it was just there in the background. The rules say that the judges must judge only on the tricks performed. There is no account made for style, the flow of the flying, interpretation of the mood of the music, etc. (although how anyone could claim that the music we had on Sunday had any "mood" whatsoever is a mystery to me).

Perhaps we don't need music?

Personally, I think we do, but I'm trying to be as open-minded as possible.

Having a short, random piece of music makes it fairer for the fliers but harder to run the competition: you need to find good music, you have to play it through X times, etc. Having a longer piece of music that the fliers alternate 30 seconds to makes the competition much "fuller" (i.e there's a higher flying-to-waiting ratio) and it gives flyers a chance to recover from a wrap or crash. I think it would also make it more exciting to have the fliers changing over instantly on a flag or whistle. But it can also make it grossly unfair because one flier might be more familiar with a piece of music than the other. If a key element of Freestyle is fitting flying to music, then the advantage of knowing where that music is going is obvious.

The French rules emphasise a "Trick" competition rather than a "Freestyle" one and the difference is more than just a name. The former being more tecnically oriented, the latter having a greater artistic emphasis. I personally think that the emphasis on tricks with STYLE is much more important than just tricks by themselves.

Here's some more random ideas:

More later....

A 

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